Mali dictator victims’ mass grave discovered

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This 11 November 2016 video is called Mali coup leader to face trial on Nov. 30.

A France24 video used to say about itself:

Mali coup leader Sanogo charged with murder

27 Nov 2013

General Amadou Sanogo, leader of a March 2012 coup that plunged Mali into chaos, was on Wednesday jailed on suspicion of murder and complicity to murder, just hours after soldiers forcibly entered his Bamako residence to arrest him.

General Amadou Sanogo, who led the March 2012 coup that plunged Mali into chaos, was jailed on suspicion of murder and complicity to murder on Wednesday, a judicial source said.

Investigating judge Yaya Karembe ordered Sanogo’s arrest and then charged him, just hours after several dozen Malian soldiers forcibly entered Sanogo’s residence in central Bamako to arrest him.

The former junta leader has repeatedly ignored summons by the justice ministry to answer questions related to the deaths of six people during an army protest.

Mali‘s newly-elected President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is under pressure to restore the state’s authority over both the army, which carried out last year’s coup, and the north, which was occupied by a mix of separatist and Islamist rebels.

…

A Bamako-based diplomat said that Sanogo was also wanted for questioning over the deaths and disappearances of soldiers who tried to resist his coup last year.

Detained by force

An AFP journalist who witnessed Sanogo’s detention said several dozen Malian soldiers forcibly entered Sanogo’s residence in central Bamako, escorted him outside and drove him away.

“He was refusing to appear before the judge. So we came to carry out a warrant for his transferral,” one of the soldier[s] said.

Sanogo last year led a group of mid-level officers to overthrow then-president Amadou Toumani Toure, upending what had been considered one of west Africa’s flagship democracies.

The coup precipitated the fall of northern Mali to militants linked to al Qaeda, but an intervention by French and African troops in January chased the rebels from the region’s main cities.

In May last year, Sanogo and his former junta were granted a general amnesty and the captain received the status of former head of state, with all the accompanying benefits. That status was later withdrawn, but Sanogo then leapt from the rank of captain to general in August after the presidential election.

Human Rights Watch described his promotion as a “shameful act” and argued that the former captain should have been investigated for alleged involvement in torture.

From AFP news agency:

Twenty-one bodies found in Mali mass grave

BAMAKO – Agence France Presse

Twenty-one bodies were found overnight Tuesday in a mass grave near Bamako, believed to be the remains of soldiers close to Mali‘s ousted president Amadou Toumani Toure, officials said.

“We have found 21 bodies, probably of ‘red beret’ soldiers, in a mass grave in Diago. The bodies were exhumed,” a Malian justice ministry official said. A security official told AFP that “identity cards found in the mass grave seem to confirm that they were missing ‘red beret’ soldiers.” The discovery near the capital Bamako comes a week after the arrest and detention of Amadou Haya Sanogo, leader of the March 22, 2012 coup against Toure that plunged Mali into chaos.

The government says Sanogo has been charged with complicity in kidnappings, but a source close to the judge in the case told AFP the charges also include murder, complicity to murder and carrying out kidnappings.

Fifteen people, mainly soldiers from his inner circle, were arrested immediately after him.

Sanogo’s coup toppled what had been heralded as one of west Africa’s most stable democracies and precipitated a crisis in which Al-Qaeda-linked groups seized control of the country’s north, enforcing a brutal form of Islamic law until a French-led military intervention forced them out.

In the months that followed, Sanogo’s then-headquarters in the central town of Kati were the scene of abuses and killings carried out against soldiers seen as loyal to Toure.

Some 20 “red berets” were killed by Sanogo’s followers in a failed counter-coup on April 30, 2012. Their bodies were never recovered. An aide to judge Yaya Karembe, who brought the charges against Sanogo, said investigators were led to the mass grave site by his former followers.

“In the past three weeks Sanogo’s former companions had given us precise information about the mass grave,” he told AFP at the cordon set up by security forces near the grave.

“But I wish to be cautious,” he said. “We need further analysis to determine if they are indeed ‘red berets’.” …

Sanogo was controversially promoted from captain to lieutenant-general in August, prompting fellow ex-junta members also seeking promotion to mutiny at his Kati barracks and forcing the army to intervene.

The bodies of three missing soldiers were subsequently discovered in and around the barracks and around 20 officers, including Sanogo’s former deputy, were arrested.

Sanogo still commands support in some circles, including parts of the army, but Defence Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga — part of a new government sworn in after presidential elections last summer — said this week he would not hinder the court case against him.

December/04/2013

What does this AFP article forget to mention? What does the France24 video forget to mention?

1. Bloody military dictator Sanogo was educated by the United States military command for Africa, AFRICOM.

2. The military invasion of Mali by foreign troops (mainly French; now, including Dutch etc.) was originally to help and prop up Mr Sanogo’s cruel regime.

Sorting out Mali isn’t our job, France says: here.

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