Human Rights Watch alleges drone strike killed civilians near Guélédié and detainee torture at Sévaré

Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Mali’s armed forces and the Russia-linked Africa Corps of two new abuses against civilians in central Mali: an apparent drone strike near Guélédié village in September that the group said killed eight civilians, and the systematic torture of detainees held for months at a military base in Sévaré.

The rights group said its findings were based on geolocated video, survivor testimony and witness interviews. It said it also remotely interviewed four former detainees about conditions at the Hamadoun Bocary Barry army base in Sévaré. In a competing account, Mali’s armed forces said after the Guélédié strike that troops had targeted “terrorist elements.” Human Rights Watch said it sent letters in early October to the Malian and Russian defense ministers and received no response.

The allegations add to scrutiny of Mali’s counterinsurgency campaign and of the role played by Africa Corps, the force that has largely replaced Wagner’s footprint in Mali and is widely described as operating under closer Russian state control. Human Rights Watch said that if confirmed, the reported abuses could amount to serious violations of the laws of war, including unlawful attacks on civilians, torture and denial of medical care.

“Civilians are bearing the brunt of the Mali junta’s failure to rein in its abusive forces and allies,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, a senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Recent atrocities implicate the Malian army as well as Russia-controlled Africa Corps, for which Russian officials should also be held accountable.”

Human Rights Watch said the Sept. 16 strike hit an area about 600 meters northeast of Guélédié’s village center in the Mopti region. The group said it verified and geolocated witness video from the aftermath showing bodies, two burned motorcycles and a destroyed solar panel.

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that villagers had gathered around a tree where a man was selling access to the Starlink satellite internet service. According to the rights group, witnesses said fighters from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, an al-Qaida-linked armed group, often used the service and that more than 100 JNIM fighters were in the village at the time, but none were among the casualties. One villager told Human Rights Watch: “The explosion was deafening, really strong.”

On Sept. 24, Médecins Sans Frontières, the medical aid group also known as Doctors Without Borders, said staff at the Ténenkou Referral Health Center treated four “seriously injured” people from the incident, all with “burns over their entire bodies,” and that one “died shortly after arrival.” MSF said at least seven people were killed, a slightly lower toll than the eight deaths reported by Human Rights Watch.

A day after the strike, the Malian armed forces chief of staff said military units had “spotted terrorist elements concealed under vegetation northeast of Guélédié” along with “war equipment and satellite communication devices,” and had “neutralized” them and destroyed their equipment. That official account conflicts with Human Rights Watch’s allegation, based on witness testimony and video analysis, that civilians were killed.

Separately, Human Rights Watch said Malian soldiers and Africa Corps fighters held numerous detainees between May and August in a metal shipping container at the Sévaré base under inhuman conditions. The group said it interviewed one civilian arrested on May 7 in Guirowel and three Quranic students arrested on July 4 in Thy after a JNIM attack on a military position there.

The four former detainees said they were held incommunicado in extreme heat, without windows, toilets or washing facilities, and with little food or water and no adequate medical care. “The heat was unbearable,” one former detainee said, according to Human Rights Watch.

Three of the former detainees alleged that Malian soldiers and Africa Corps personnel repeatedly tortured them in a room near the base entrance using severe beatings, electric shocks and waterboarding, or simulated drowning, Human Rights Watch said. The group also said former detainees reported that several prisoners died in the container; one said eight people died during his detention, an allegation Human Rights Watch did not independently verify.

Human Rights Watch said the three men arrested in Thy were released on July 20, while the Guirowel detainee was released on Aug. 6. It said relatives reportedly paid 1.8 million CFA francs to secure the release of the three Thy detainees and 1 million CFA francs for the Guirowel detainee.

The allegations come amid a renewed military offensive after coordinated attacks in late April by JNIM and the Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA. Human Rights Watch said Mali and its Russia-linked partner force should face credible investigations and that those responsible should be held to account. The group also noted that the U.N. Human Rights Council renewed the mandate of the independent expert on Mali in March.