Mali junta files 'espionage' complaint against MINUSMA

Mali's ruling junta has asked prosecutors to probe the United Nations' peacekeeping mission for "espionage" following a report which said hundreds of people were massacred last year by Malian troops and their allies.

In a statement published on social media on Tuesday, the public prosecutor's office said a unit specialising in "terrorism and transnational crime" had received a complaint from the state over members of the MINUSMA mission.

The junta's complaint describes the MINUSMA members as "co-authors or accomplices in crimes, among others, of espionage, harming the morale of the army or air force, use of false documents and harming external state security," said the statement from Monday.

MINUSMA'S human rights division investigated events that unfolded in the central town of Moura between May 27-31, 2022.

According to a report published last month by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), at least 500 people were executed by the Malian army and "foreign" fighters.

The figures cited by the OHCHR amount to the worst atrocity Mali has experienced since an insurgency flared in 2012.

It was also the most damning document yet against Mali's armed forces and their allies.

Downward spiral

The junta on May 14 savaged the report as "fictitious" and said the only dead were "terrorist fighters".

It also said the UN used satellites to gather information without government clearance - a technique, it said, that amounted to espionage and warranted investigation.

The accusation accelerates a downward spiral between the junta and the MINUSMA, or the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali.

Mali on Friday called on the UN Security Council to withdraw the 15,000 peacekeepers immediately, denouncing the "failure" of the 10-year-old mission to meet security challenges. MINUSMA's mandate expires on June 30.

The landlocked state has been ruled by the military since 2020, when its elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was swept aside by army officers.

The junta then forged an alliance with the Kremlin, prompting France, the country's traditional ally, to withdraw its troops after Russian personnel moved in.