The ruling junta in Mali made a gesture by allowing the UN to meet with President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. The soldiers also released two detainees before the arrival in Bamako on Saturday of a West African delegation to demand a return to order.
The mission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will be led by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, accompanied by the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Niger, Kalla Ankourao, we learned Friday from the organization in Bamako. The junta will receive ‘with pleasure’ this delegation from West Africa on Saturday, a junta official then told AFP.
The gesture of the military, who claim to want to organize a short-term political transition, comes as the opposition has gathered thousands of people in Bamako to celebrate the fall of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta.
Thursday evening, the putschists had allowed a UN team to visit the personalities it detains, including the overthrown president and his Prime Minister Boubou Cissé.
Still 17 inmates
During their coup on Tuesday, the military arrested President Keïta, known as ‘IBK’, who then announced his resignation overnight, and his Prime Minister Boubou Cissé, whom they took to the Kati military camp. , in the suburbs of Bamako, which has become the center of the new power.
‘We have authorized a UN human rights mission in Mali to visit all 19 Kati prisoners, including ex-president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and ex-Prime Minister Boubou Cissé,’ said a junta official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
Other personalities were also arrested, including the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Security, Generals Ibrahima Dahirou Dembélé and M’Bemba Moussa Keïta, President of the National Assembly Moussa Timbiné and the Chief of Staff of the army, General Abdoulaye Coulibaly.
‘We released two prisoners, the former Minister of Finance and the Economy Abdoulaye Daffé and Sabane Mahalmoudou’, the president’s private secretary, the junta official said. ‘Two prisoners were released. Kati has 17 left. This is proof that we respect human rights, ‘he continued.
Abdoulaye Daffé is considered to be close to the Sharif of Nioro, the mentor of the figurehead of the protest who has been demanding since June the resignation of President Keïta, Imam Mahmoud Dicko.
/ ATS
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