Dakar: Following a report that claimed hundreds of people were massacred by Malian troops and their allies last year, Mali's ruling junta has asked prosecutors to look into the UN peacekeeping mission for "espionage."
The public prosecutor's office said a unit specialising in "terrorism and transnational crime" had received a complaint from the state regarding members of the MINUSMA mission in a statement shared on social media on Tuesday.
The human rights division of MINUSMA looked into what happened in the central town of Moura between May 27 and May 31 of 2022.
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At least 500 people were executed by the Malian army and "foreign" fighters, according to a report released last month by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The MINUSMA members are allegedly "co-authors or accomplices in crimes, among others, of espionage, harming the morale of the army or air force, use of false documents, and harming external state security," according to the junta's complaint.
The OHCHR's statistics represent the worst atrocity Mali has seen since a militant insurgency erupted there in 2012.
The evidence against Mali's military and its allies was also the strongest yet in this document.
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The report did not specifically state the nationality of the foreigners, but Mali has brought in Russian paramilitaries, which Western nations and others claim are Wagner mercenaries.
On May 14, the junta denounced the report as "fictitious" and claimed that the only people who had died were "terrorist fighters," a term commonly used to refer to militants.
Additionally, it claimed that the UN was secretly gathering information using satellites, a practise that called for an investigation.
The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali, or MINUSMA, and the junta are now in a downward spiral as a result of the accusation.
Mali demanded on Friday that the 15,000 peacekeepers be immediately withdrawn from the country, criticising the 10-year-old mission's "failure" to address security issues. The mission of MINUSMA ends on June 30.
Since 2020, when army officers enraged by Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's failure to quell the militant insurgency overthrew him, the landlocked state has been governed by the military.
After the junta formed a partnership with the Kremlin, France, the nation's longtime ally, withdrew its troops as Russian personnel moved in.
