A collaborative investigation by international media outlets has uncovered secret prisons run by Russian Wagner mercenaries in Mali, where abuse and torture are carried out with impunity. Reporters with the Forbidden Stories consortium – which includes RFI's sister channel France 24 – reveal how the Wagner paramilitary group duplicated methods it has used in Russia and Ukraine.
Since arriving in Mali in 2021, Russian Wagner mercenaries have arrested, imprisoned and tortured hundreds of civilians in former United Nations bases and military camps shared with the Malian army, according to the Forbidden Stories investigation published on Thursday.
Forbidden Stories and its partners (including IStories, Le Monde and France 24) identified six military bases where Malian civilians were detained and tortured by Wagner paramilitaries between 2022 and 2024 – Bapho and Nampala in the Ségou centre-south of the country, Sévaré and Sofara in the central Mopti region and Kidal and Niafunké in the Kidal and Timbuktu regions in the north.
A Malian aid worker tortured on 5 August, 2024 in the Nampala camp recounts that his torturers played Russian music at every interrogation, and the waterboarding he and two others were subjected to.
"They did it to me three times, until I couldn’t breathe anymore," he said. The guards alternated waterboarding with beatings, sometimes with batons or electric cables. “It was like they were killing dogs."
The aid worker had been arrested with other men from his village when Malian soldiers and Wagner operatives came looking for a walkie-talkie used by members of the al Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (Jnim).
Another civilian victim, a Tuareg care assistant, was also apprehended during a raid on the market in Kita, near Dioura – an area of major Jnim activity. He remembers the arrival of the helicopters, the deadly gunfire and the looting of shops.
Taken with a group of men to the Sévaré camp, he escaped torture – but a less fortunate prisoner who welcomed him told him: "Pray to God that you don't suffer the same thing as us."
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Civilians viewed as collaborators
Mali’s ruling junta enlisted the services of Wagner fighters following two coups led by Colonel Assimi Goïta in 2020 and 2021.
The group has supported Malian military operations against jihadists and Tuareg separatists.
Their deployment was made easier by France’s military withdrawal, finalised in 2022, after nine years of military operations against terror groups in Mali, and the end of the UN peacekeeping mission (Minusma) in December 2023.
The Wagner Group has been repeatedly accused of committing crimes against civilians while operating alongside the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) in central and northern Mali.
"Civilians have been deliberately targeted since Wagner’s arrival," said Yvan Guichaoua, a researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies. "Security forces tend to view populations living in jihadist-influenced areas as collaborators," he told the investigation.
Earlier this month, Malian diplomatic and security sources said Wagner had left Mali and its units had been taken over by the Africa Corps, a Russian paramilitary group managed by the Russian government.
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'FAMa has no say'
The Wagner Group is also known for its bloody track record in Ukraine, Syria and the Central African Republic (CAR).
The investigation showed that Wagner mercenaries duplicated methods it used in occupied Ukraine and in Russia – kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, cutting off contact with the outside world and systematic torture, sometimes to the point of death.
The civilians abducted and detained outside any legal framework in the Mali camps included shepherds, shopkeepers and truck drivers.
In Kidal and Niafunké, prisoners were crammed into containers once used to hold equipment belonging to Minusma. In addition to beatings and lack of food, the prisoners suffered from the heat and overcrowding.
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A Malian officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said that FAMa was unable to rein in its Russian partners.
“Wagner arrests people independently. FAMa has no say,” the officer told Le Monde, a member of the investigative consortium.
Mali’s Ministry of Defence, Russia’s Defence Ministry, the Russian Embassy in Mali and Wagner mercenaries have not responded to requests for comment, Forbidden Stories said.
