The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on three members of Mali's ruling junta for facilitating the activities and expansion of Wagner PMCs in the country. This was reported on the website of the state Ministry of Justice.
“Today’s action exposes the main Malian officials who played an important role in helping to consolidate the Wagner PMCs. in Mali over the past two years,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Brian Nelson. According to him, representatives of the transitional authorities allowed the exploitation of the sovereign resources of Mali, which the mercenaries then used for the war in Ukraine.
Under the sanctions were the Minister of Defense of Mali Sadio Camara, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force of the country Alu Boy Diarra, as well as his deputy Adama Bagayoko. The United States knows that it was Camara who repeatedly traveled to Russia in 2021 to conclude an agreement between the transitional government and the Wagner PMC. Diarra accompanied him several times on trips, and later began to lead part of the mercenaries in Mali. Bagayoko, according to the Ministry of Finance, promoted a private military company in neighboring regions and gave mercenaries access to Malian gold. constantly engaged in serious criminal activity, including mass executions, rape, child abduction and other atrocities in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali.”
The launch of a private military company in Mali became known in September 2021. Prior to that, two military coups had taken place in the country, in connection with which, according to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the Malian authorities turned to PMCs from Russia to help in the fight against terrorism. At the same time, mercenarism is prohibited in Russia; under article 359 of the Criminal Code, up to 15 years in a colony can be appointed.
In June of this year, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop asked the UN Security Council to withdraw the country's stabilization mission (MINUSMA) from Mali. Prior to this, Human Rights Watch found that at least 20 out of 40 interviewed people living in central Mali had witnessed human abuse.
According to the respondents, during part of the military operations carried out by the Malian military, people who the locals called «whites», «Russians» or «Wagners» joined the army. A large number of these militants were seen on February 3, 2021 during the assault on the village of Seguela, which killed eight people and detained 17 more. Local residents were then beaten, and their houses were looted.
“There were almost only white Wagnerians, they led the whole operation,” a witness told The Intercept. “They were heavily armed, masked, wearing camouflage uniforms and spoke a language we didn’t understand, but it wasn’t French.” One of the affected local residents, in a conversation with the authors of a study about the stay of Wagner PMCs in Mali, noted that due to the language barrier, no one understood the demands of the mercenaries, and as a result, they used violence.
Only 11 months later, the Malian authorities recognized cooperation with Russian private military companies. At the same time, they denied participation in military operations of the Wagner PMC. Lavrov, on the other hand, continued to assert that mercenaries from Russia act only as instructors for the local military and “do not participate in field operations.”
Already after the start of the war in Ukraine, the Malian authorities demanded that the UN representative leave the country, accusing him of «destabilizing and subversive actions.» The organization was then preparing a report that local troops and Wagner mercenaries killed more than 500 people, some of them died as a result of extrajudicial executions. As a result, the Malian authorities promised to file espionage cases against those who compiled a report on murders and other crimes.
“We found compelling evidence that the Malian army and allied foreign fighters associated with Wagner PMCs committed serious violations, including killings, kidnappings and looting, against civilians during counter-insurgency operations in central Mali and went unpunished,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, Senior African Sahel Researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Intercept.< /p>
Earlier, the UN accused Wagner mercenaries of a series of attacks in Central Africa and human rights violations. In particular, as representatives of the organization found out, they illegally detained people, tortured and executed them. The Russian ambassador in the capital of the Central African Republic, like Lavrov, said that the mercenaries are in the republic in the role of «instructors» who «do not take part in hostilities.»