ABUJA, Nigeria—The French military has released videos appearing to show Russian mercenaries burying corpses near the Gossi military base in northern Mali as part of a smear campaign to falsely accuse the departing French forces of leaving behind mass graves.
Not for the first time, it appears to be a case of Russian misdirection.
The Russians want Malians to believe their ex-colonial masters are behind the death and destruction in northern Mali but Daily Beast sources say the Russians are to blame. Three witnesses say that Russia’s private military contractors have been blindfolding local villagers and forcing them to dig mass graves to hide the evidence of their atrocities.
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Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that foreign soldiers—believed to be Russian mercenaries from the infamous Wagner Group, which is run by one of President Putin’s closest associates, and their Malian associates summarily executed an estimated 300 civilian men in the central Malian village of Moura in late March.
Three days after the NGO’s report was made public, the Russians returned to the scene of the crime in an attempt to hide any evidence that could prove it massacred civilians according to Daily Beast sources in the village.
On April 8, just two days after the United Nations demanded that Malian authorities grant unhindered access… so that it can conduct a thorough investigation,” dozens of Russian mercenaries returned to Moura where they dragged scores of young men away from their compounds and forced them to bury corpses that were littered round the town in mass graves, three witnesses told The Daily Beast.
The Russians, according to the witnesses, divided the villagers into about six groups of between 10 to 15 individuals, blindfolded them, and then marched them to different locations where bodies were still lying on the ground.
“We walked for hours to get to an area near the sand dunes,” said 28-year-old Salif who was in a group made up of 15 villagers. “When they removed the blind fold all I could see was dead bodies littered everywhere.”
The Daily Beast has changed the names of witnesses in the story to protect them from possible retribution.
When Salif’s group arrived at their location the mercenaries split them into smaller units of five people, handed them shovels and ordered them to dig three wide pits for the bodies to be buried in.
“After digging and throwing the corpses we saw into the pit, we were ordered to walk as far as two kilometers in search of more bodies,” said Salif. “I think we buried about 60 bodies on our first day alone.”
Elsewhere, another witness said a group of 13 people arrived at a location that appeared to be a camp operated by the Russians. He said he and his colleagues buried over 40 bodies in a single wide pit they were ordered to dig.
“They told us to burn the bodies first before covering the pit with sand.” Seydou, a 30-year-old livestock trader, told The Daily Beast. “Some of the victims had their hands tied to their back which indicate that they were tortured before being killed.”
Warning: The image below contains a graphic scene.
This image taken from a video shows soldiers burying bodies near an army base in northern Mali. The French military says it has videos of Russian mercenaries burying bodies near an army base in northern Mali.
French Army via APIn a large residential compound, a witness told The Daily Beast that a group of 10 villagers who arrived with the Russians were ordered to pick up dead bodies and bury them in two mass graves which the villagers themselves had dug. Among the dead, the witness said, were women and children who had been shot in the head.
“Some of the children appeared to be as young as 5,” said Sadio, 31, who is also a livestock trader. “I also saw the body of a woman who appeared to be pregnant.”
Some of the villagers said they spent days digging mass graves under the supervision of Russian mercenaries. While most groups spent two days completing their work, one witness said he and his colleagues were held for six days—from April 8 to 14—and taken from one location to another digging graves and burying dead bodies before being released by the Russians.
“We were taken to about six locations, and everywhere we went we dug at least two big graves,” said Sadio. “In some graves we buried five people. In others we buried up to 20.”
Witnesses said the bodies belonged to people who were killed over four days late last month. HRW reported that 19 witnesses from Moura and six other villages informed the organization that soldiers arrived by helicopter near the livestock market on 27 March and exchanged gunfire for some 15 minutes with about 30 Islamist fighters. Over 100 Russian fighters accompanied by Malian soldiers were then deployed to Moura for an operation that lasted until March 31.
“After surrounding the area, the soldiers patrolled through town, executing several men as they tried to flee, and detaining hundreds of unarmed men from the market and their homes,” HRW said. “Over the four days, the soldiers ordered the detained men in groups of four, six, or up to 10, to stand up and walk for between several dozen and several hundred meters. There, the Malian and foreign soldiers summarily executed them.”
Locals told The Daily Beast afterwards that hundreds of bodies were left in the village, some of them either dismembered or burnt beyond recognition.
“There were some [dead bodies] without heads or arms,” a local vigilante told The Daily Beast. “Our people were killed like chickens.”
At the start of April, Mali’s defense ministry released a statement claiming it's army killed 203 “terrorists” and arrested 51 others between March 23 to 31 in a large-scale assault on the “terrorist fief” of Moura. A statement from the Russian foreign ministry congratulating Mali for a “key victory” against “terrorism” and rubbishing allegations of the involvement of Russian mercenaries in the operation followed afterwards. All that didn't stop the U.N. from seeking to know much more about what transpired in Moura even though those efforts have been hampered by attempts by Malian authorities to prevent an investigation to the frustration of the United Nations.
“We are extremely concerned that Malian authorities have still not granted UN human rights investigators access to the village of Moura,” U.N. spokesperson Seif Magango said in a statement. “Time is of essence to ensure accountability and prompt, effective justice for victims.”
At the moment, attempts to cover-up what transpired in Moura last month is likely ongoing. Witnesses say the Russians returned to the village at the start of last week and seized potential witnesses to the killings in March.
“They arrived at my compound in pickup vehicles and ordered all the men to come out of their houses.” Samir, a young artist in Moura, told The Daily Beast. “They then began to select young people who looked familiar to them and took them away.”
Since the incident, no one has heard from those seized, according to villagers who spoke to The Daily Beast. Malian soldiers, the villagers said, then blocked the roads leading in and out of the Moura so that no one could come in and no one could leave. People in the village were warned not to speak to anyone concerning the March incident.
This undated photograph handed out by the French military shows Russian mercenaries boarding a helicopter in northern Mali.
French Army via APFor years, Moura—a village of about 10,000 inhabitants—has been under the quasi-control of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) militants who imposed a strict Sharia law and levied taxes on villagers. Jihadists from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) also have a presence in the village and, like AQIM, have been targeting Malian forces and perceived enemies within the village.
Last December, Mali’s military junta began deploying hundreds of mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private military company financed by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, after France announced that it was withdrawing its troops from the restive West African nation following a dispute between the military government and Macron administration. By the start of the year, about 1,000 so-called Russian instructors had been sent to Mali. Since their arrival, reports of atrocities committed by the group have continued to expand.
The French army said it transferred control of the military base to Malian armed forces in what it said was done in a transparent manner last week.
As controversy continues to surround the activities of Wagner mercenaries in Mali, those who’ve come up against their brutality have warned that no one may ever know the extent of the atrocities the Russians committed in the troubled nation.
“When they [Russian mercenaries] kill, they bury to cover what they’ve done,” said Samir. “They’ve done terrible things that no one may ever get to find out.”
