Russian Wagner group accused of cold-blooded killings of civilians in Mali

Warning: This story contains descriptions of torture and physical violence. Some readers may find this distressing.

A shopkeeper told the BBC how Russian mercenaries fighting jihadists in Mali murdered two men in front of him in cold blood before threatening to chop off his fingers and kill him.

It is one of several similar testimonies collected by the BBC that show the tactics used by Russian militants as they launch brutal counter-insurgency operations against Islamist militants in the West African country, tactics that have been widely condemned by rights groups.

A military junta seized power in Mali in 2021 and forced French troops to leave after accusing them of failing to contain a rebellion. The junta turned to Russia for help from the Wagner mercenary group, which at the time had ties to the Kremlin.

Wagner has since exited the country and its operations have been replaced by Afrika Korps, part of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Some Wagner mercenaries highlighted their atrocities in an invitation-only Telegram group until it was shut down in the middle of this year. A report released last month by the European Council on Foreign Relations said.

They “routinely share photos and videos of murder, rape, torture, cannibalism and desecration of corpses” against alleged insurgents and civilians, the report added.

In June, the Africa Report publication stated that “Infiltration” of Wagner-related Telegram channelsfound 322 videos and 647 photos of atrocities, including severed heads and gouged eyes, as well as “racist” posts.

The shop owner we spoke to has fled Mali and now lives in a refugee camp on the border with Mauritania. We have named him Ahmed and have changed the names of all victims cited in this article for safety reasons.

He told the BBC his ordeal began in August 2024 when Wagner fighters drove to the large shop he ran in central Nampala.

Ahmed said that despite being a regular visitor, Wagner fighters wanted to detain his boss and accuse him of colluding with jihadists who are powerful in the area.

“They took me to the car, pushed me in and tied my hands,” he added.

“A Wagner soldier took a knife and put it on my finger and asked me: ‘Where is the shopkeeper?’ I told him he was in (the capital) Bamako, but he replied: ‘Wrong answer’.”

Ahmed said Wagner’s people took him to a high-security Malian military base through a translator and put him in a hangar.

“I was in the hangar with three guys from Wagner. They filled the tank with water and asked me to take off my clothes. I did. They put my head in the water until I almost suffocated and then I fell. Then they put their feet on my chest and I started breathing (heavily).

“Then they dipped my head in the water again and asked me a second time about the shop owner and I told them he was in Bamako,” Ahmed said, adding that the torture was repeated a third time and he gave the same answer.

Ahmed said that after the ordeal, he was thrown into a small toilet where there were other locals he knew, including Hussein, who was beaten so badly that he was unrecognizable at first.

Ahmed said: “After about 40 minutes, they brought Omar (another acquaintance). He was also in a bad condition. They tortured him. We slept in that toilet and the next morning they brought a piece of bread and a small cup of coffee.”

He said he was taken back to the hangar and Russian fighter jets wrapped bandages around his face and head.

“I couldn’t see. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t hear. They put a knife to my throat and asked the translator to tell me it was the last chance. If I didn’t tell them the truth, they would behead me. I told the translator I had given them all the information I had.”

Ahmed said Russian interrogators then removed the bandages and threw him into the kitchen, where he spent the night with two strangers – a Tuareg man who told him he had been detained while grazing but was not told why; and an Arab man who said he had been caught searching for camels.

The Tuareg and Arab communities that roam the vast deserts of northern Mali are often viewed with suspicion, particularly since the Tuareg separatist uprising more than a decade ago was hijacked by jihadist groups that now operate primarily under the banner of the al-Qaeda affiliate Jamaat-ul-Islami Islami (JNIM).

Ahmed said that after spending the night with them, he was taken back to the hangar.

“They brought these two men (Tuareg and Arab) and beheaded them in front of me,” Ahmed said.

Ahmed looked terrified and was fighting back tears as he told the BBC what happened next.

“They pulled a body close to me, smelled the fresh blood, and said: ‘If you don’t tell us the whereabouts of the shop owner, you will suffer a similar fate.'”

Ahmed said he was spared after Commander Wagner called Malian officers who assured him that the store owner was not colluding with jihadists.

Ahmed said the commander then went to the base and released him, another store owner and Omar.

“I stayed there for 15 days. Then I decided to go to Mauritania with my wife and children,” Ahmed said.

The BBC has contacted the Russian and Malian defense ministries for comment, but they have yet to respond.

The Sentinel, a campaign group co-founded by actor George Clooney and former U.S. government official John Prendergast, said In a report released in August, Wagner fighters not only abused civiliansBut it has also created “chaos and fear” within the Malian military, forcing commanders to remain silent.

The report quoted a Malian official as saying that the Wagner agents were “worse than the French. They think my people are stupider than they are. We have gone from the frying pan to the fire.”

Declaring its mission “accomplished” despite deteriorating security situation, Wagner announced in June this year that he would withdraw troops from MaliAnalysts say most of its aircraft have been absorbed into Afrika Korps.

The Senegal-based Timbuktu Institute think tank estimates that 70 to 80 percent of Afrika Korps fighters served in Wagner.

“In fact, the Afrika Korps continues Wagner’s legacy of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and acts of torture,” It said in a report released in July.

However, violence monitoring group Acled said early trends suggested Afrika Korps’ behavior was “less predatory” than Wagner’s.

“The number of incidents involving the deliberate killing of civilians or mass atrocities has dropped significantly,” Acled’s senior West Africa analyst Héni Nsaibia told the BBC.

The conflict has forced nearly 50,000 people to flee to Mauritania’s Mbeira refugee camp, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

They include Bintu, who told the BBC she fled the village with her five children last year after her husband’s bullet-riddled body was thrown into a river. Locals told her he was shot multiple times while riding his horse.

“Who will take care of my children? Who will take care of me?” she asked as she cleaned a small patch of land outside the camp.

“When I hear the name Wagner, I feel hurt. I feel scared. I hate the words Wagner because they bring me sadness.”

When the BBC met Yusuf, another refugee, dressed in navy blue and a white turban, he was sitting under a shed, his eyes reflecting the trauma he had experienced.

He recalled that he and his friends were herding cattle near the Mauritanian border and stopped at a well to get fresh water when they saw a cloud of dust in the distance.

Youssef said a car drove towards them and it turned out to be Wagner fighters who started beating them for no reason – an experience some refugees recounted to the BBC.

Yusuf recalled that one Wagner fighter “grabbed me and threatened to throw me into a well,” but another fighter stepped in to prevent him from doing so.

He said he and his friends were then put into separate vehicles, each carrying three Wagner agents.

“They beat me as they drove, kicked me, put their boots on my face and head, and hit me in the chest. I don’t know what happened to our cattle.”

He and his friends were taken to a military camp north of Railay town, where he said they were tortured.

“A man came with a metal rod. He beat us so hard I felt like I was going to die. They tied our arms so we couldn’t move and beat us hard on our thighs and calves to stop us from escaping.”

Yusuf said they were then dragged into an office and beaten until they passed out.

He added that when he regained consciousness, he found his hands tied to the motionless hands of a friend.

“Then they put a motorcycle close to my face, revved the engine and blew the exhaust into my nose, causing me to fully wake up. They did the same thing to my friend, but he didn’t respond. That’s when they realized he was dead.”

Yusuf said he did not know what happened to his friend’s body, but he and other friends were again released without explanation.

Former shopkeeper Ahmed said that before he was tortured, he witnessed how Wagner carried out atrocities on a massive scale, at one point sieging the entire town of Nampala and surrounding villages.

He said he was one of the residents forced to gather on a football pitch as mercenaries tried to identify people they claimed were using satellite phones.

Ahmed said: “They called Siku Sisi. He was just a random guy wearing a traditional hat. They took off his clothes, filled a bucket with water and grabbed his legs. Then they submerged his head in the bucket until he couldn’t breathe.”

Ahmed added that as Malian soldiers looked on, the Wagner militants then brought shovels and pickaxes to the football pitch to scare people into thinking they would dig their own graves unless they identified the person they claimed was using the satellite phone.

He said the residents were released after a full day in the scorching sun, except for one who was taken away by mercenaries, whose fate he did not know.

Ahmed said he wants Wagner fighters to be brought to justice and held accountable for their atrocities.

“This experience haunts me. It gives me nightmares,” he said, sitting in the camp dressed in all black, unsure whether he would ever return to his ordinary life as a shopkeeper.

Additional reporting by BBC’s Favor Nunoo