Probe uncovers secret Wagner prisons in Mali

A collaborative investigation by international media outlets has uncovered secret prisons run by Russian Wagner mercenaries in Mali, where abuse and torture are carried out with impunity, according to a report in RFI. Reporters with the Forbidden Stories consortium – which includes RFI's sister channel France 24 – reveal how the Wagner paramilitary group duplicated methods it has used in Russia and Ukraine. Since arriving in Mali in 2021, Russian Wagner mercenaries have arrested, imprisoned and tortured hundreds of civilians in former UN bases and military camps shared with the Malian army, according to the Forbidden Stories investigation published on Thursday. Forbidden Stories and its partners (including IStories, Le Monde and France 24) identified six military bases where Malian civilians were detained and tortured by Wagner paramilitaries between 2022 and 2024 – Bapho and Nampala in the Ségou centre-south of the country, Sévaré and Sofara in the central Mopti region and Kidal and Niafunké in the Kidal and Timbuktu regions in the north. A Malian aid worker tortured on 5 August 2024 in the Nampala camp recounts that his torturers played Russian music at every interrogation, and the waterboarding he and two others were subjected to. ‘They did it to me three times, until I couldn’t breathe anymore,’ he said.

The guards alternated waterboarding with beatings, sometimes with batons or electric cables. ‘It was like they were killing dogs.’ The aid worker had been arrested with other men from his village when Malian soldiers and Wagner operatives came looking for a walkie-talkie used by members of the al Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims. Mali’s ruling junta enlisted the services of Wagner fighters following two coups led by Colonel Assimi Goïta in 2020 and 2021. The group has supported Malian military operations against jihadists and Tuareg separatists, notes RFI. Their deployment was made easier by France’s military withdrawal, finalised in 2022, after nine years of military operations against terror groups in Mali, and the end of the UN peacekeeping mission in December 2023. The Wagner Group has been repeatedly accused of committing crimes against civilians while operating alongside the Malian Armed Forces in central and northern Mali. Earlier this month, Malian diplomatic and security sources said Wagner had left Mali and its units had been taken over by the Africa Corps, a Russian paramilitary group managed by the Russian Government. Mali’s Ministry of Defence, Russia’s Defence Ministry, the Russian Embassy in Mali and Wagner mercenaries have not responded to requests for comment, Forbidden Stories said.