Officials from the Ivory Coast have demanded that Mali free 49 of its troops who were detained there on Sunday after being accused of being mercenaries.
The soldiers were in Mali as part of a UN peacekeeping mission, according to the Ivory Coast government, and were listed as Ivorian Army employees.
They had earlier been charged with being “illegally in the national territory of Mali (…) in possession of weapons and munitions of war, without a mission order or authorization,” according to Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, the government spokesman for Mali.
The intention of those detained, he continued, was unmistakably to compromise Mali’s security.
According to the declarations from both countries, the soldiers were employed by the Sahelian Aviation Services, a commercial business that the UN had contracted with.
The detachment was “deployed by Troop Contributing Countries in support of their contingents, and that’s a standard procedure in peacekeeping deployments,” according to UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq, but it was not formally a part of their peacekeeping mission in Mali.
The Sahelian Aviation Services have been protected by foreign soldiers, but Mali’s government announced it plans to stop this and would demand that they leave the country.
Sahelian Aviation Services, “the airline,” was encouraged by the government to “entrust its security going forward to the Malian defense and security forces.”
Mali has recently experienced conflicts with other nations and the UN.
The transitional government in Mali declared in June that it would not permit the UN mission to look into ongoing abuses of human rights there, including an incident in a small village in the country’s center where rights organizations accuse the Malian army of having killed more than 300 civilians in April.
Additionally, France has announced the evacuation of its troops stationed there nearly ten years ago to assist in the fight against extremist insurgents.
