The paramilitaries of the Russian private security company settled from the end of January in a camp of the Malian army located in the Niono Circle, in the center of the country, according to the information of the “World”.
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A chair, electrical cables, execution simulation and each act of torture, the same question: “Where are the terrorists?”. “I do not know”, tirelessly repeats the young Peul breeder to the soldiers “white and black” who, according to him held and tortured, in February 2022, in a camp of the Malian army located in the circle of Niono, at center of the country. According to his testimony, harvested in the field by a human rights defender and to which Le Monde had access before recovering the details from international and local sources, three men were in charge of the interrogation: a “White man speaking an unknown language”, as well as a soldier and a Malian interpreter.
The shepherd tells how the stranger, dressed in the “same uniform as the fama (the Malian armed forces),” forced him to drink a lot of water “before the Malian soldier” attaches an electric cable around toes “and” go “passing the current, many times”. “I lost consciousness. After, the three men tied my feet and hands and suspended my head down. The Malian soldier has sharpened a knife and told me,” We’re going to kill you ” ” “Leave this man, he has no information,” said the stranger in Malians, before the alleged victim is released.
According to our information, paramilitaries of the private security company Russian Wagner settled in this camp from the end of January and several sources identify the “white soldiers” cited as mercenaries of the group. Between December and March, nearly a thousand Russian militiamen were sent to the center and to the north to support the army in the fight against jihadist groups that have continued to expand their grip since 2012.
The junta in power since the double coup of August 2020 and May 2021 persists in denying the presence in the country of Wagner members – already accused of many abuses in the Central African Republic and Libya -, saying that only Regular Russian trainers have been deployed as part of strengthening the military partnership between Bamako and Moscow. A rapprochement operated, according to the Malian authorities, to compensate for the safe vacuum created by the end of the French anti-terrorist operation “Barkhane” in Mali.
dozens of calcined bodies
In the center of the country, more than a dozen civilians say they were tortured by Fama and foreign suppletes. Among these alleged victims in Mali, another peacekeeper, detained in February in another military camp, in Diabaly, also in the Niono Circle, reported to the humanitarian actor cited above having a drowning simulation, a towel Covering his nose and his mouth while soldiers throwing him buckets of water in the face. “Then a white man electrocuted me asking where the jihadists” were positioned “. A photo that Le Monde procured shows the lacée back, with more than a dozen wounds, from another Malian. He also submits to being tortured by the fama and their Russian supplements in this military base.
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