By Enyichukwu Enemanna
A United Nations agency, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has alleged that the Malian army and foreign fighters summarily executed no fewer than 500 persons in the central region of the country within a space of four days during an anti-jihadist operation in March 2022.
In its report released on Friday, the OHCHR says the operation took place between March 27 and 31, 2022, in the town of Moura.
The OHCHR “has reasonable grounds to believe that at least 500 people were killed in violation of norms, standards, rules and/or principles of international law”, the report says.
A breakdown of the victims according to the report includes about 20 women and seven children. The were “executed by the FAMa (Malian Armed Forces) and foreign military personnel” who had complete control over the area, said the report.
OHCHR says its findings were based on an investigation by the human rights division of the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSMA.
OHCHR also has “reasonable grounds to believe that 58 women and girls were victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence,” it said further.
It accused the Malian security forces and foreign fighters of perpetrating torture on people who had been arrested.
The findings are “extremely disturbing”, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk laments.
“Summary executions, rape and torture during armed conflict amount to war crimes and could, depending on the circumstances, amount to crimes against humanity,” he said in a statement.
Though the report did not explicitly say who the foreign fighters were, it cites Malian official statements on Russian “instructors” helping in the fight against jihadists.
It also cites comments attributed to Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, on the presence of the private Russian security company Wagner in Mali.
The report cites local testimony, collected by UN investigators, describing the foreigners as white men in fatigues speaking an “unknown” language — indicating they were not speaking French, the official language, or English.
Witnesses said the foreign soldiers “supervised” the operations, according to the report.
