Free Republic

Military officers in Mali detained the president, prime minister and defence minister of the interim government on Monday, deepening political chaos just months after a military coup ousted the previous president, multiple sources told Reuters. President Bah Ndaw, Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and defence minister Souleymane Doucoure were all taken to a military base in Kati outside the capital Bamako, hours after two members of the military lost their positions in a government reshuffle, the diplomatic and government sources said. Their detentions followed the military ouster in August of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. The development could exacerbate instability in the...

Col. Assimi Goita, who emerged Thursday as the head of the junta in power, worked for years with U.S. Special Operations forces focused on fighting extremism in West Africa. He spoke regularly with U.S. troops and attended U.S.-led training exercises, said officers from both countries, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Goita, who also received training from Germany and France, according to the officers, headed Mali's special forces unit in the country's restive central region, where fighters linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have established a stronghold that...

The leaders of the coup that ousted Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita spent most of the year training in Russia before returning to boot out the democratically-elected leader at gunpoint, according to sources in the Malian military. The rebels took control of Mali's largest military base in Kati, just outside the capital, Bamako, on Tuesday before storming Keita's official residence, seizing the president and forcing him to resign as leader of the West African nation. Numerous media outlets, including the BBC, immediately reported that the coup was led by Malick Diaw and Sadio Camara, two army colonels who hold top...

Issued on: 19/08/2020 - 02:25 Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita resigned on Tuesday and dissolved parliament hours after mutinying soldiers detained him at gunpoint, plunging a country already facing a jihadist insurgency

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse have been detained by mutinying soldiers in the capital during an apparent coup attempt. The development on Tuesday came hours after soldiers took up arms and staged a mutiny at a key base in Kati, a town close to Bamako. It followed a weeks-long political crisis that has seen opposition protesters taking to the streets to demand the departure of Keita, accusing him of allowing the country's economy to collapse and mishandling a worsening security situation. Mali's years-long conflict, in which ideologically-motivated armed groups have stoked ethnic tensions while jockeying...