The military junta in power in Bamako accused the French army of “espionage” and “subversion” on Tuesday evening after the French general staff broadcast videos shot by a drone near a base in the center of the Mali recently returned by France. The authorities have “noted since the beginning of the year more than fifty deliberate cases of violation of Malian airspace by foreign aircraft, in particular operated by French forces”, announces a press release from the government of Bamako.
The illegal presence of a drone notified by the Malian army
“One of the most recent cases was the illegal presence of a drone of the French forces, on April 20, 2022, above the Gossi base, the control of which (had) been transferred to the” Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) the day before, adds the text, signed by Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, spokesperson for the government set up by the junta. “The said drone was present (…) to spy on our valiant FAMa. In addition to spying, the French forces were guilty of subversion by publishing (of) false images fabricated from scratch in order to accuse the FAMa of being perpetrators of killings of civilians, with the aim of tarnishing (their) image”.
On April 21, two days after it returned its Gossi base to the FAMa, the French army set out to counter what it called an “informational attack” and released a video of what it claims was Russian mercenaries burying bodies near this base in order to accuse France of war crimes in Mali.
Wagner Group soldiers identified
These images, taken by a drone, show soldiers busying themselves around corpses which they cover with sand. In another sequence, we see two of these soldiers filming the half-buried bodies. The French general staff assures that they are white soldiers, suggesting that they are members of the private military company Wagner, whom it has identified on videos and photos taken at other places.
The day after the publication of these images, the Malian general staff announced that it had discovered “a mass grave, not far from the camp formerly occupied by the French force Barkhane”, named after the French anti-jihadist operation in the Sahel. “The state of advanced putrefaction of the bodies indicates that this mass grave existed well before the handover. Consequently, the responsibility for this act can in no way be imputed to the FAMa”, added the Malian staff at the time.
“The Malian public will be informed of the progress of the investigation”
On Tuesday, Malian military justice announced the opening of an investigation “to shed light” after “the discovery of a mass grave in Gossi”. According to the public prosecutor at the Bamako military court, “public opinion will be kept regularly informed of the progress of the investigation, the results of which will be made public”. Plunged since 2012 into a deep security crisis that the deployment of foreign forces has failed to resolve, Mali has experienced two military coups since August 2020.
The junta in power in Bamako has gradually moved closer to Moscow at the same time as it turned away from France, which has been militarily engaged in the country against the jihadists since 2013. Mali has thus appealed massively to what it presents as “instructors” from Russia while Westerners (Paris and Washington in particular) denounce the presence in the country of “mercenaries” from the private Russian group Wagner, which the Malian colonels firmly deny.
Tensions between Bamako and Paris
Against the backdrop of the diplomatic crisis with Bamako, Paris announced in February the withdrawal of its soldiers deployed in Mali, an operation to be completed this summer. On April 8, the head of French diplomacy Jean-Yves Le Drian questioned the version of the Bamako authorities who claim to have “neutralized” 203 jihadists at the end of March in Moura (central Mali) where the organization for the defense of human rights Human Rights Watch (HRW) accuses Malian soldiers supported by foreign fighters of having summarily executed some 300 civilians.
Since then, the United Nations mission in Mali (Minusma) has been asking Bamako in vain to be able to go there to be able to investigate in order to determine what really happened in Moura.