The transitional government of Mali considers the 49 Ivorian soldiers arrested on Sunday July 10 at Bamako airport as “mercenaries” and decided on Monday July 11 to “to make available to the competent judicial authorities”.
“It has been established that the forty-nine Ivorian soldiers were illegally on the national territory of Mali (…) in possession of weapons and munitions of war, without a mission order or authorization”said government spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga in a statement read Monday evening on national television.
“The fatal intention of those arrested was clearly to break the dynamics of the refoundation and securing of Mali, as well as the return to constitutional order”said Abdoulaye Maiga.
Two military coups
Mali, a landlocked country in the heart of the Sahel, was the scene of two military coups in August 2020 and May 2021. It recently adopted a transition timetable that should allow civilians to return to power in March 2024. political crisis goes hand in hand with a serious ongoing security crisis since the outbreak, in 2012, of separatist and jihadist insurgencies in the North.
The spokesperson for the United Nations mission in Mali (Minusma) Olivier Salgado had hinted earlier that the soldiers arrested were part of“national support elements” (NSE) logistics at Minusma.
The NSEs, Olivier Salgado specified on his Twitter account, are “national personnel deployed by troop-contributing countries, in support of their contingents”, “a common practice in peacekeeping missions”. “According to our information, their relief on July 10 would have been communicated beforehand to the national authorities”he also said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs not informed
The Malian authorities note for their part that their Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not been informed through official channels. The Malian government also noted a « violation flagrante » of the Malian Penal Code “incriminating attacks on the external security of the State, including attacks on the integrity of the territory”.
Some of the Ivorian soldiers selected came to Mali on the basis of an agreement to work on the logistics base of the company Sahelian Aviation Services (SAS) on behalf of Minusma.
The Malian government affirms for its part that four different versions were put forward by the soldiers arrested to justify their presence on Malian territory: “The confidential mission, the rotation within the framework of the Minusma, the securing of the logistics base of the airline Sahelian Aviation Services and the protection of the German contingent. »
Information that has gone viral
He thus decided “to put an end, with immediate effect, to the protection activity of the airline Sahelian Aviation Services by foreign forces and demand their immediate departure from Malian territory..
Information from “arrest” of Ivorian soldiers began to be broadcast on social networks on Sunday before going viral, with some accusing these soldiers of being “mercenaries” came to Mali “make a coup”. Monday evening the Ivorian authorities had not yet officially reacted.
“Dirty political game”
In January, the junta had asked Denmark to withdraw its newly arrived but deployed troops “without his consent”. Copenhagen had denounced “dirty political game”. The ruling junta in Bamako has turned away from France and its partners, and turned to Russia to try to stem the spread of jihadism that has spread to the center of the country as well as neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. .
This violence caused thousands of civilian and military deaths as well as hundreds of thousands of displaced persons. With its approximately 13,000 soldiers, the Minusma, created in 2013 to support the Malian political process, was extended for one year on June 29.