Mali's judiciary needs more international support

To avoid a new Guantanamo disaster in the Sahara, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) calls for more international support for Mali's judges and courts. This is to be seen as the only possibility to guarantee fair trials for imprisoned terror suspects and for soldiers who violated human rights. "Mali's corrupt and badly organized judiciary system is absolutely overchallenged with trying to bring those to justice who are responsible for the human rights violations in the north of the country," said the STP's Africa-expert, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen on Tuesday. "But if these crimes are not dealt with effectively, the goal of the military intervention will be jeopardized and there will be no success in trying to secure sustainable peace."

More than 200 suspected radical Islamic terror suspects were arrested since the beginning of the French military intervention on January 11, 2013. While 40 prisoners are being held in secret locations in northern Mali, 160 prisoners are locked up in a separate wing of the prison in the capital, Bamako. "Their further fate is still uncertain. No one knows when the detainees will be tried for which offenses and by which particular court," said Delius. "The international community must urgently pay more attention to the legal aspects of the darkest chapter in Mali's recent history. The way the prisoners will be dealt with will also decide whether a national reconciliation in Mali can be achieved."

Several fighters of the Tuareg movement MNLA – who are still fighting the Islamists together with the French army – are still supposed to be held accountable for crimes committed by the movement in 2012, during the military advance.

On March 8 – following pressure from France – Mali had signed an agreement, promising that prisoners will not be tortured. A few days before the agreement was signed, imprisoned radical Islamic fighters had been beaten, tortured and threatened with death by Malian soldiers in Léré, close to Timbuktu. More than 1,200 shop-lootings, 125 abductions and arrests and nearly 300 killings of civilian people committed by Malian soldiers have not yet been punished.

According to information of the French Ministry of Defence, more than 600 radical Islamic fighters were killed since the beginning of the military intervention. However, there is no further information about the circumstances of their deaths.