Since arriving in Mali in 2021, Russian Wagner mercenaries have abducted and detained hundreds of civilians in former UN bases and military camps shared with the Malian army. Our investigation, as part of the Viktoriia project, reveals secret prisons where abuse and torture are carried out with total impunity. Since arriving in Mali in late 2021, Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group have arrested, imprisoned and tortured hundreds of civilians. Forbidden Stories and its partners have discovered the duplication of the methods used in occupied Ukraine and Russia: illegal detention and systematic use of torture They have done so using former UN bases and camps shared with the Malian army. Forbidden Stories and its partners have identified six detention centers where Wagner held civilians between 2022 and 2024. The screams no longer reached his ears, drowned out by a blaring, almost deafening sound. “It was their Russian music. They played it every time there was an interrogation,” said aid worker Wangrin*. In front of him were two other Malian civilians, tied up and captured earlier that day. Each was brought forward, shirtless, and forced before a basin filled with water. The three guards grabbed their heads and plunged them into the container. “They did it to me three times, until I couldn’t breathe anymore,” recounted Wangrin, who was tortured on August 5, 2024. The guards alternated waterboarding with beatings—hitting their sides and heads, sometimes with batons. “It was like they were killing dogs,” he recalled in a faint voice. “I started crying watching the beatings.” Wangrin heard the same Russian songs for seven nights straight; a grim sign that the newly arrived prisoners at the Nampala military base in central Mali were now being tortured. Like him, several hundred Malian civilians were reportedly rounded up and secretly detained by Russian Wagner mercenaries, since late 2021. Forbidden Stories and its partners France 24, Le Monde, and IStories investigated these secret detentions of civilians by Russian mercenaries in Mali. This investigation was carried out as part of the Viktoriia project, in memory of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, captured by Russia in the summer of 2023 while investigating the illegal detention of civilians in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. She was declared dead in captivity on September 19, 2024. Our investigation reveals the duplication of this system of detention and torture of civilians in Mali by Russian mercenaries. Two continents and two very different contexts, but we found the same patterns : kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, no contact with the outside world, and systematic torture—sometimes to the point of death. (…) Our consortium travelled to Mbera, Mauritania, to find survivors of Wagner’s secret prisons in Mali. Approximately 270,000 Malians who fled the combat zones live there, including 118,000 in a camp run by the United Nations. In Mbera – just a stone’s throw from the border, in the Sahara Desert – former detainees can testify more easily than in Mali. By cross-checking these prisoners’ accounts, Forbidden Stories and its partners were able to identify six military bases where Malian civilians were detained and tortured by Wagner between 2022 and 2024 : Bapho, Kidal, Nampala, Niafunké, Sévaré, and Sofara.
via forbiddenstories: Torture and Forced Disappearances: Inside Wagner’s Secret Prisons in Mali