By Oyintari Ben
TIMBUKTU, Mali – Forty-six Ivory Coast soldiers were given 20 years in prison for conspiring against the government by a court in Mali, while three more were given the death penalty in absentia.
Prosecutor General Ladji Sara said in a statement on Friday that the troops were also found guilty of carrying and transporting firearms and fined more than $3,000 for their actions.
Three of the 49 Ivorian troops who were detained at the airport in Bamako, the capital of Mali, in July were later released. Their detention sparked a diplomatic dispute between the neighbouring nations and was widely denounced by allies in the area.
The soldiers were held when they went to work for Sahel Aviation Service, a commercial business that the United Nations had hired to do work in Mali.
The military leadership in Mali said the soldiers were working as mercenaries, but the government in Ivory Coast claimed they were participating in a UN peacekeeping mission.
Prior to a January 1 deadline set by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the main political and economic bloc in the region, to release them or face sanctions, they were charged with attempting to undermine state security in August and found guilty in a trial that started on Thursday and ended on Friday.
In its repeated requests for their release, Ivory Coast claimed that its soldiers were being held prisoner. The nation made the decision to withdraw its final contingent of soldiers from the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali known last month (MINUSMA).
“The junta is exacerbating its isolation and raising the possibility that (the UN peacekeeping mission) would fail.”
Tensions between Mali’s military leadership and the outside world have risen as a result of the case.
Colonel Assimi Goita, the head of the military government, has come under increasing international isolation ever since he overthrew the government two years ago and failed to hold democratic elections by the time set by the international community.
Goita has also permitted the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary company, to assist in the war against ISIL and al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents (ISIS).
As the French and other local forces withdrew, the Russians entered Mali.
