In Mali, a Massacre With a Russian Footprint - The New York Times - 0 views
-
Suddenly, five low-flying helicopters thrummed overhead, some firing weapons and drawing gunfire in return. Villagers ran for their lives. But there was nowhere to escape: The helicopters were dropping soldiers on the town’s outskirts to block all the exits.
-
The foreigners, according to diplomats, officials and human rights groups, belonged to the Russian paramilitary group known as Wagner.
-
However, using satellite imagery, The New York Times identified the sites of at least two mass graves, which matched the witnesses’ descriptions of where captives were executed and buried.
- ...18 more annotations...
-
The Wagner Group refers to a network of operatives and companies that serve as what the U.S. Treasury Department has called a “proxy force” of Russia’s ministry of defense. Analysts describe the group as an extension of Russia’s foreign policy through deniable activities, including the use of mercenaries and disinformation campaigns.
-
They ally with embattled political and military leaders who can pay for their services in cash, or with lucrative mining concessions for precious minerals like gold, diamonds and uranium, according to interviews conducted in recent weeks with dozens of analysts, diplomats and military officials in Africa and Western countries.
-
However, Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov said in May on Italian television that Wagner was present in Mali “on a commercial basis,” providing “security services.”
-
“From Monday to Thursday, the killings didn’t stop,” said Hamadoun, a tailor working near the market when the helicopters arrived. “The whites and the Malians killed together.”
-
The death toll in Moura is the highest in a growing list of human rights abuses committed by the Malian military, which diplomats and Malian human rights observers say have increased since the military began conducting joint operations with the Wagner Group in January.
-
In Moura, the security forces “may have also raped, looted, arrested and arbitrarily detained many civilians,” according to the mission, which is preparing a report on the incident.
-
The mass executions began on the Monday, and the victims were both civilians and unarmed militants, witnesses said. Soldiers picked out up to 15 people at a time, inspected their fingers and shoulders for the imprint left by regular use of weapons, and executed men yards away from captives.
-
The soldiers and their Russian allies left on Thursday, after killing six last prisoners in retaliation for four who had escaped. A Malian soldier told a group of captives that the soldiers had killed “all the bad people,” said Hamadou.
-
Investigators from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali have so far been denied access to Moura. Russia and China blocked a vote at the U.N. Security Council on an independent investigation.