UN experts call for an independent investigation into alleged abuses by the Wagner Group in Mali

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Feb. 1 (EUROPA PRESS) –

A group of United Nations experts has called for an independent investigation into alleged Human Rights abuses and possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Mali by mercenaries from the Wagner Group, owned by a Russian oligarch close to the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

“We are particularly concerned by credible reports of the execution of several hundred people who were surrounded in Moura, a town in central Mali, for several days at the end of March 2022,” said the experts, who have indicated that those responsible would be Malian soldiers accompanied by personnel “believed to belong to the Wagner Group.” Most of the victims were members of the Fulani community.

Thus, the experts have stated that they are “dismayed” by “the apparent increase in the outsourcing of traditional military functions to the Wagner Group in various military operations, including some described as anti-terrorism, in Nia Ouro, Gouni and Fakala”.

“Mali must exercise the utmost vigilance in prohibiting direct participation in hostilities by private individuals operating on its territory. The use of mercenaries and mercenary-like actors or private and military security companies only accentuates the cycle of violence and impunity that prevails in the country,” they explained.

In this sense, they have also regretted that “the lack of transparency and ambiguity regarding the legal status of the Wagner Group, added to the reprisals against those who dare to speak, create a general climate of terror and total impunity against the victims of the abuses of the Wagner Group”.

Since 2021, experts have received numerous complaints about executions, mass graves, torture, rape, sexual violence, looting, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances at the hands of the Malian Armed Forces and their allies in the Mopti region (centre) and elsewhere. from the African country.

The military junta that governs Mali following the coup d’état in August 2020 has since distanced itself from France and has led a rapprochement with its new ally, including the deployment of mercenaries from the Wagner Group, which has been denounced in numerous occasions by western countries.

Mali and the rest of the Sahel countries have experienced an upsurge in violence, both jihadist at the hands of groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and inter-communal in nature, which has led France and the G5 Sahel countries — that the Malian junta abandoned in 2022– to ramp up its operations.