Hello InformationWar platform! I'm here today with news from Africa and Mali precisely. Mali is a Sahel country in Africa that has been engulfed by several conflicts caused by armed groups linked to al-Quada and ISIL and have faced stiff resistance from the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission for the past 10 years.
Since 2013 when the United Nations Peacekeepers entered Mali there have been several atrocities committed by both the armed groups and the peacekeepers against Mali citizens as well as against the peacekeepers. Today's post will focus on the latter and how after series of investigations some people are facing trials over the death of some peacekeepers in Mali.
Mali has been struggling for a decade with violence from armed non-state actors that has spread across the Sahel region despite costly international efforts to quash it.
Since the inception of the peacekeeping mission in Mali in 2013, the mission has lost about 281 soldiers to death and these officers were killed by the armed non-state actors and sometimes the United Nations have discovered that there deaths were linked to conspiracies from civilians.
With this in place, the United Nations Peacekeepers have urged the Malian government to investigate and prosecute those involved in the killings of her officers.
A court in Mali has sentenced a man to death over a 2019 attack that killed three United Nations peacekeepers, the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission has said, without naming the defendant
The trial centred on an attack on five peacekeepers travelling through the rural commune of Siby in southern Mali, some 50km (31 miles) from the capital Bamako, on February 22, 2019. Three were killed, all from Guinea, which has one of the largest contingents in the mission.
The Bamako's court on Tuesday convicted a man for his involvement in the attack and killing of the said Guinea officers that were part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in 2019 and the criminal court convicted him for his criminal association, murder, robbery and illegal possession of fire arms as well as the role he played in the killing of these United Nations Peacekeepers in Mali.
Judges imposed the death penalty, which has not been carried out in Mali since a moratorium was placed on executions in 1980.
The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) statement did not name the convicted man and gave no details about what plea he entered. The court could not be reached for comment.