Russia’s Wagner group accused of killing civilians in cold-blood in Mali

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

A shopkeeper has told the BBC how Russian mercenaries fighting jihadists in Mali brutally murdered two people in front of him and then threatened to cut off his fingers and kill him too.

It is one of several similar pieces of evidence collected by the BBC showing tactics used by Russian fighters as they launched a brutal counter-insurgency campaign against Islamic militants in the West African nation – methods widely condemned by human rights groups.

In 2021 a military junta seized power in Mali, accusing French troops of failing to stop the rebellion and forcing them to leave. Enlisting the help of the Wagner mercenary group, the junta turned to Russia, which was at the time linked to the Kremlin.

Wagner has since fled the country, and its operations have been taken over by Africa Corps, which falls under Russia’s Defense Ministry.

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

“They regularly shared photographs and videos of murder, rape, torture, cannibalism, and desecration of corpses against alleged insurgents and civilians,” the report said.

In June, the publication Africa Report said it had “infiltrated” a Telegram channel associated with Wagner, finding 322 videos and 647 photographs of atrocities, including severed heads and gouged-out eyes, and “racism-filled” posts.

The shopkeeper we spoke to has fled Mali and is now living in a refugee camp across the border in Mauritania. We have named him Ahmed, and changed the names of all victims quoted in this article for their protection.

He told the BBC that his ordeal began when Wagner fighters stormed the large store he ran in the central city of Nampala in August 2024.

Despite being a regular customer, Ahmed said, Wagner fighters wanted to detain his owner and accuse him of colluding with jihadists, who have a strong presence in the area.

“They took me to the vehicle, pushed me inside and tied my hands,” he said.

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

Ahmed said Wagner’s men, who spoke through an interpreter, then took him to a well-fortified Malian military base, and put him in a hangar.

“Me and three of Wagner’s guys were in the hangar. They filled a tank with water and asked me to take off my clothes. I did. They dunked my head in the water until I suffocated and I fell over. Then they put their legs on my chest and I started breathing (loudly).

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

After this brutality, Ahmed said he was thrown into a small toilet block, where other locals he knew were – including Hussain, who was beaten so badly that he could not recognize him at first.

Ahmed said, “About 40 minutes later, they brought Omar (another acquaintance). He was also in a terrible condition. They had 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, where Russian fighters covered his face and head with bandages.

“I couldn’t see. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t hear. They put a knife to my throat and told the interpreter to tell me this is the last chance. If I didn’t tell them the truth, they would cut my head off. I told the interpreter I had given them all the information.”

Ahmed said his Russian interrogators removed the bandages and threw him in a kitchen where he spent the night with two strangers – an ethnic Tuareg man who told him he was detained without notice while herding cattle, and an Arab man who said he was picked up while searching for his camels.

The nomadic Tuareg and Arab communities that roam the vast deserts of northern Mali are often viewed with suspicion, especially since the Tuareg separatist rebellion was hijacked more than a decade ago by jihadist groups who now operate primarily under the banner of the al-Qaeda affiliate, Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).

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

“They brought two people (Tuareg and Arab) and beheaded them in my presence,” Ahmed said.

Ahmed, looking terrified, tried to hold back tears as he told the BBC what happened next.

“They brought one of the bodies closer to me to smell the fresh blood and said: ‘If you don’t tell us the address of the shop owner, you too will suffer a similar fate.'”

Ahmed said his life was saved only when a Wagner commander called a Malian army officer, who assured him that the shop owner was not in league with jihadists.

Ahmed said the commander went to the base to release him, as well as another shop owner and Omar.

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

The BBC has contacted the defense ministries of Russia and Mali for comment, but they have not yet responded.

Sentry, a campaign group co-founded by actor George Clooney and former US government official John Prendergast, said in a report released in August that Wagner fighters had not only committed abuses against civilians, but had also created “chaos and fear” within the Malian military hierarchy, forcing commanders to remain silent.

It quoted a Malian officer as saying that Wagner’s handlers “were worse than the French. They think my men are more stupid than them. We have gone from the frying pan to the fire.”

Declaring its mission “accomplished” despite the deteriorating security situation, Wagner announced its withdrawal from Mali in June this year, with analysts saying most of its fighters had been absorbed into the Africa Corps.

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

“Indeed, Afrika Korps has inherited Wagner’s legacy of human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings and acts of torture,” a report released in July said.

However, violence-monitoring group Acclaim said early trends showed that Afrika Korps’ conduct was “less violent” than Wagner’s.

“The number of incidents involving deliberate killing of civilians or mass atrocities has declined significantly,” Henny Nsibia, senior West Africa analyst at Acclaim, told the BBC.

The conflict has forced about 50,000 people to flee to the Mbara refugee camp in Mauritania, according to the UN refugee agency.

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

“Who will take care of my children? Who will take care of me?” he asked as he swept a small patch of land outside his home in the camp.

“When I hear the name Wagner, I feel shock. I feel fear. I hate the words Wagner because they bring sadness to me.”

Another refugee, Yusuf, dressed in a dark blue dress and a white turban, sat under a shed when the BBC met him, his eyes reflecting the trauma of his experiences.

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

Youssef said a vehicle drove towards him, and it turned out to be Wagner fighters, who began beating him for no apparent reason – an experience recounted to the BBC by several refugees.

Joseph recalled that one Wagner fighter “grabbed me and threatened to throw me into the well”, but another intervened to prevent him from doing so.

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

“While they were driving, they beat me all the way, kicked me, pressed their shoes on my face and head and hit me on the chest. I don’t know what happened to our cattle.”

Along with his friends, he was taken to a military camp north of the city of Lere, where he says he was tortured.

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

Yusuf said he was then dragged into an office and beaten until he became unconscious.

He said that when he regained consciousness, he found his hands tied to the motionless hands of one of his friends.

“Then they brought a motorcycle near my face, revved the engine and blew smoke into my nose to wake me up completely. They did the same to my friend, but he did not respond. Then they realized he was dead.”

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

Ahmed, a former shopkeeper, said that before his own torturous experience, he had witnessed how Wagner was committing atrocities on a large scale, once besieging the entire Nampala town and surrounding villages.

He said he was among residents forced to gather on a football field as mercenaries tried to identify a man they alleged was using a satellite phone.

Ahmed said, “They called Sikou Cissé. He was a simple man wearing a traditional hat. They took off his clothes and filled a barrel with water and held his feet. Then they dunked his head in the barrel until he was unable to breathe.”

Ahmed said, with Malian soldiers watching, Wagner fighters later took shovels and pickaxes to the football field, tricking people into thinking they were going to dig their own graves, until they pointed them at a man they accused of using a satellite phone.

He said that after spending the day in the scorching heat, the residents were released – except one who was taken by mercenaries and whose fate he did not know.

Ahmed said he wanted the 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 his all-black attire at the camp. He was not sure whether he would ever return to his normal life as a shopkeeper.

Additional reporting by BBC’s Favor Nunu