Parade of Malian soldiers in Kati (Mali), January 20, 2022. FLORENT VERGNES / AFP
A chair, electric cables, a mock execution, and with every act of torture the same question: “Where are the terrorists? “I don’t know,” the young Fulani breeder tirelessly repeats to the “white and black” soldiers who, he says, detained and tortured him in February 2022 in a Malian army camp located in the Nyono administrative district. , in the center of the country. According to his testimony, collected on the spot by a human rights activist and to which Le Monde had access before checking details with international and local sources, the interrogation was led by three men: “a white man speaking an unknown language”, as well as a Malian soldier and an interpreter.
A shepherd tells how a foreigner wearing “the same uniform as FAMA (Mali Armed Forces)” “made him drink a lot of water” before a Malian soldier “wrapped an electric cable around his toes” and made him “pass by “. current, several times. “I passed out. After that, three men tied my hands and feet and hung me upside down. A Malian soldier sharpened a knife and told me: “We will kill you.” “Leave this man there, he has no information,” a foreigner would advise Malians before after the alleged victim was released.
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According to our information, since the end of January paramilitaries of the Russian private security company “Wagner” have settled in this camp, and several sources call “white soldiers”, who are called mercenaries of the group. Between December and March, almost a thousand Russian militias were sent to the center and north to support the army in the fight against jihadist groups that have continued to increase their power since 2012.
The junta, in power since the August 2020 and May 2021 double coups, vehemently denies the presence in the country of Wagner members, already accused of multiple abuses in CAR and Libya, claiming that only full-time Russian instructors were sent there. as part of strengthening the military partnership between Bamako and Moscow. The rapprochement took place, according to the Malian authorities, to compensate for the security vacuum created as a result of the end of the French anti-terrorist operation “Barkhane” in Mali.
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Dozens of burnt bodies.
In the center of the country, more than a dozen civilians say they were tortured by FAMA and foreign auxiliaries. Among these alleged victims, another Fulani herder, detained in February in another military camp, in Diabali, also in Nyono’s circle, told the human rights activist quoted above that he survived a mock drowning while covering his nose and mouth with a towel as soldiers poured buckets of water in his face. . “Then I was shocked by a white man who asked where the jihadists were.” The photograph obtained by Le Monde shows the torn back with more than a dozen wounds on another Malian. He also claims that he was tortured by FAMA members and their Russian henchmen at this military base.
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