The US has sanctioned three top junta officials in Mali for their suspected participation with the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries.
Wagner fighters have been accused of atrocities while fighting alongside the Malian army against Islamists.
Since Wagner soldiers were deployed to Mali in late 2021, civilian casualties have more than tripled, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Wagner’s presence in Mali has never been officially acknowledged by the Mali government.
However, the clandestine mercenary outfit is thought to have around 1,000 fighters in Mali, one of several African countries where it operates.
Following a rupture in diplomatic relations between Mali’s military regime and France, the former colonial power withdrew its counter-terrorism forces.
Defence Minister Col Sadio Camara, Air Force Commander Col Alou Boi Diarra, and Air Force Deputy Commander Lt. Col Adama Bagayoko have all been sanctioned.
In a US statement, they are accused of being “instrumental in facilitating the Wagner Group’s entrenchment in Mali over the past two years”.
Col Camara and Col Diarra are accused of planning and organizing Wagner’s deployment to Mali, while Col Bagayoko is accused of seeking to arrange Wagner’s deployment to neighboring Burkina Faso and allegedly attempting to assist it in gaining access to gold mines in Mali.
According to the US, civilian casualties in Mali have climbed by more than 270% since Wagner began serving there in December 2021.
“Many of those deaths were the result of operations conducted by the Malian armed forces alongside members of the Wagner group,” Mr Blinken said.
A number of suspected abuses have been highlighted by UN researchers and human rights organizations.
In March 2022, Malian military, supervised by Wagner fighters, massacred roughly 500 mostly defenseless villagers in a community in the Mopti region over five days, according to a UN report released in May.
The Malian government denied wrongdoing and promised an investigation. It later requested that the United Nations withdraw its 12,000-strong peacekeeping mission.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported this week that citizens were being summarily executed and forcibly disappeared in central Mali.
In response, Mali’s foreign ministry claimed it “regretted” the charges and accused HRW of conducting “biased investigations” that ignore the asymmetric nature of the country’s Islamist threat.
“In this regard, the government strongly refutes allegations which suggest that anti-terrorism operations lead to ethnic targeting and that these operations supposedly indiscriminately impact civilians,” the statement said.
While Malian officials have previously stated that Russian military instructors are present in the nation, they have never revealed the presence of Wagner.
However, in a media interview, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Wagner “provides security services” to the Malian government, and that following Wagner’s attempted mutiny last month, the mercenaries were working as instructors in Mali.
According to a significant batch of US military documents published earlier this year, Mali has been used as a proxy to obtain weaponry from Turkey on Wagner’s behalf, with one Pentagon despatch stating that the junta leader had approved this.
For more than a decade, Mali has been fighting Islamist insurgents.
Military leaders, who came to power in 2020, are now in charge of a transitional administration meant to pave the path for democratic elections.
