Dakar: A long-awaited UN report published on Friday claims that at least 500 people were executed by the Malian army and foreign fighters in March 2022 during an anti-militant operation in Mali.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Sahelian nation has endured the worst atrocity since a militant insurgency erupted in 2012.
The evidence against Mali's armed forces and their foreign allies is also the strongest yet in this document.
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Although Mali has brought in Russians who Western nations and other parties claim are Wagner mercenaries, their nationality is not specifically mentioned in the report.
According to the OHCHR's description of the events that took place in the central town of Moura between March 27 and March 31, 2022, there are "reasonable grounds to believe that at least 500 people were killed in violation of norms, standards, rules, and/or principles of international law."
According to the report, the victims were "executed by the FAMa (Malian Armed Forces) and foreign military personnel" who had complete control of the region. The UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA,'s human rights division conducted a thorough investigation before publishing the report.
According to the report, there were about 20 women and seven children among those killed, and evidence indicates that 58 women and girls were the victims of rape and other sexual violence. Those who had been detained were subjected to acts of torture, it continued.
Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, described the results as "extremely disturbing."
"Summary executions, rape, and torture during armed conflict amount to war crimes and could, depending on the circumstances, amount to crimes against humanity," he stated in a statement.
The military junta in charge of Mali overthrew the country's elected president in 2020 amid demonstrations against the ineffectiveness of military operations against militants. Since then, the junta has severed ties with France, the nation's longtime ally, and dispatched Russian operatives and warplanes to support its weakened armed forces.
It refutes claims that they are Wagner mercenaries and states that the Russians are providing military training.
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The identity of the foreign fighters is not stated explicitly in the UN report. However, it cites official statements from Mali regarding Russian military "instructors" as well as remarks attributed to Sergei Lavrov, the country's foreign minister, regarding Wagner's presence there.
The report cites local testimony describing the foreigners as white men in fatigues speaking a "unknown" language, indicating they were not speaking either English or French, the official languages, according to information gathered by UN investigators.
According to the report, witnesses claimed that the foreign soldiers "supervised" the operations.
Moura, in the Mopti region of central Mali, has long been regarded as a stronghold of the Katiba Macina, a group connected to the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), an organisation with ties to Al-Qaeda.
The report describes the late morning on March 27, 2022, arrival of Malian soldiers and their allies, assisted by five helicopters. Thousands of people from the general public came that day to a livestock fair to buy supplies for Ramadan.
The report stated that on that day, about 30 Katiba Macina members interacted with fairgoers and common people.
According to reports, a helicopter began firing "indiscriminately" in the direction of the market, to which the militants responded by opening fire. About 30 people were killed, including 12 militants.
Within a few hours, the Malian army seized control of the region and rounded up about 3,000 people in four different locations for arrest, according to the report.
The following days, they reportedly kept sweeping the area. The report claimed that Malian soldiers and their allies "allegedly picked several hundred people for summary execution over at least four days." According to reports, the men who were put to death were picked based on indicators like having long beards.
Apparently, the victims were interred in large graves. The junta described the events in Moura as a fruitful counter-militant operation that had rendered inoperative 203 "terrorists" on April 1, 2022.
However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that 300 civilian men—some of whom were suspected militants—were brutally murdered five days later. It claimed that there were white foreigners who were identified as Russian by several sources.
In April 2022, the prosecutor of a military court in Mali announced an investigation. The release of the new report coincides with the UN's preparation to decide whether to extend the 10-year-old MINUSMA mission's mandate.
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The head of MINUSMA's rights division was expelled earlier this year after repeated attacks on its human rights work by the Malian government.
The report is based on 157 individual interviews and 11 group interviews conducted over the course of a seven-month investigation from March to October 2022. With the exception of one initial flypast, the junta repeatedly barred the investigators from entering Moura