Malian Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra has resigned hours after he was arrested as he tried to leave the country, the AFP news agency reported, citing national broadcaster ORTM.
“I, Cheik Modibo Diarra, I resign with my government,” Diarra declared in a brief speech given at the premises of, and aired by, ORTM.
He gave no reason for his decision.
Earlier, a source in his entourage told AFP the prime minister had been arrested by about “20 soldiers who came from Kati”, a [...]
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A Mauritanian news website on Monday published images of a French citizen kidnapped last week by one of the armed Islamist groups controlling the north of neighbouring Mali.
Two photos published on the site Alakhbar showed the man, identified as Alberto Rodriguez Leal, 61, with his head bowed, wearing a blue shirt and flanked by two armed men dressed in kakhi robes.
“My name is Rodriguez Leal Alberto. I was kidnapped in Diema, between Nioro and Bamako by MUJAO” the Movement for [...]
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The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the Islamist groups occupying northern Mali, on Thursday claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of a French citizen two days ago.
“We claim responsibility for the kidnapping of the Frenchman in south-western Mali near the Mauritanian border,” said MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui. They would post a video of the hostage shortly, he added.
The group, which describes itself as an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has not [...]
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Northern Mali is virtually inaccessible to journalists at present. Sharia law has been in effect there since last spring, when fundamentalists took control of a large part of the country, which had been considered a model nation until then. The fundamentalists stone adulterers, amputate limbs and squelch all opposition. They have destroyed tombs in Timbuktu that were recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site.
Despite the risks, Paul Hyacinthe Mben, 39, a SPIEGEL employee and journalist in the capital Bamako , [...]
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African military action to oust Islamist militants who seized northern Mali after a March coup will start within weeks, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (pictured) said Tuesday.
?It?s a matter of weeks, not months, weeks,? the minister told France 2 television, calling the desert region that was overrun by the extremists ?a terrorist sanctuary.?
He however reiterated that France would ?not send troops on the ground? to join the West African force, but would provide ?logistical aid? and help in planning.
Since [...]
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Al Qaeda-linked Islamists in Mali threatened on Saturday to “open the doors of hell” for French citizens if France kept pushing for armed intervention to retake the rebel-held north.
The renewed threats against French hostages and expatriates came as French-speaking nations met in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where French President Francois Hollande was expected to urge the rapid deployment of an African-led force to rout the Islamists.
Hollande said the threat would not deter France’s determination to quash the Islamists in [...]
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Muslims who seized control of part of Mali are amassing money from ransoms and drug trafficking while imposing Sharia law, says a senior UN official.
They are also buying child soldiers, paying families $600 (£375) per child, Ivan Simonovic said after a fact-finding visit to the country.
‘Extremists’ seized two-thirds of Mali in March when a military coup plunged the country into chaos.
Mr Simonovic painted a grim picture of human rights abuses there.
Women’s rights were being particularly restricted, said Mr Simonovic, the [...]
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Salif Haidara sat drinking tea on the side of the road with other weary bus passengers when a man with a turban and a long beard approached them: Did they want to become holy warriors?
The skinny teen had left his poor hometown in the desert with only the yellow tank top, pants and plastic flip-flops he was wearing. Now Salif was being told he could earn $30 a day for himself and $400 a month for his family – an [...]
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To avoid being whipped, mutilated, and jailed, women in Timbuktu now have to wear black veils and loose-fitting clothing. Radical Islamists, who took control of the city months ago, are laying down their law – Sharia law – and for the first time since they’ve arrived, they’re specifically targeting women.
Over the past few weeks, Islamists from two armed groups – Ansar Dine and Mujao, who took over northern Mali in April – have increasingly made use of corporal punishment against [...]
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Two gun-toting Islamists keep watch outside a hospital room in the desert city of Gao in northeast Mali. Inside, five young men languish on beds, recovering after they were each severed of a hand and a foot.
The patient-prisoners are among the latest accused criminals to have received hardline Islamic punishments since jihadi rebels and Tuaregs seized power in Mali’s north following a coup in the capital Bamako.
A wan light filters into the room, illuminating the bandages wrapped around the men’s [...]
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Islamists in control of northern Mali are becoming “increasingly repressive,” amputating limbs, whipping people in the streets and stoning to death a couple accused of adultery, a human rights group said Tuesday.
The Islamists’ efforts to impose the form of Islamic law known as Shariah has also extended to banning ring tones on mobile phones that are not Quranic verse readings, as well as prohibiting cigarettes and alcohol.
Women who wear jewelry or perfume, or fail to cover their heads can also [...]
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Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) has threatened to execute six French hostages if France intervenes militarily in northern Mali in a message published on a Mauritanian website. The Islamist group threatens “tragedies and catastrophes” for France and its people if France and its African allies take military action in the region.
Four of the hostages, who work for French nuclear giant Areva or for one of its subsidiaries, were kidnapped on 16 September 2010 in northern Niger. Their captors [...]
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Islamists who control northern Mali extended their campaign of enforcing harsh Shariah law on Monday, amputating the hands and feet of four young men they accused of robbery in the main square at Gao, a principal town in the region.
“We cut their right hand and their left foot, in the city of Gao, at the Place de l’Indépendance,” Aliou Mahamar Touré, a professed Islamic commissioner with Mujao, an offshoot of Al Qaeda that controls Gao, said in a telephone interview. [...]
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Mali’s embattled authorities have formally requested African military intervention to oust Islamic extremists from the country’s north after months of toying with the option.
With a vast area of the country’s north occupied by Islamic extremists who have enforced strict sharia law, army sources earlier told AFP they preferred to rely first on their own troops to chase out the jihadists.
Bamako has yet to confirm a request for West African forces to intervene in northern Mali, which was announced on Tuesday [...]
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In Mali, Islamic extremists have taken control of a key town less than 200 kilometres from the line of control held by the Malian army.
After a brief stand-off with the local militia on Saturday, the Islamic ‘Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa” (MUJAO) seized control of the strategic town of Douentza.
Douentza lies 170 kilometres from the town of Mopti, which is the last army-controlled town on the route from the capital Bamako in the south west of the [...]
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Witnesses say that a man accused of rape in the northern Malian city of Timbuktu received 100 lashes, as the Islamists controlling the city continue to mete out punishments under sharia law.
The witnesses say the man, identified as a Burkina Faso citizen named Boubacar El-Bourkinabiyoune, was brought into Timbuktu’s public square on Friday morning. Resident Aboubacrine Yattara said the Islamists of the radical Ansar Dine group, which seized control of the city in April, explained that if the accused had [...]
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Residents of the north Malian city of Gao are vowing to protest the Islamist occupiers’ brutal practices.
A fortnight after the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) imposed their strict punishment on a thief in Ansongo, the al-Qaeda offshoot on threatened to amputate the hands of another 60 people.
“These repeated criminal practices will only make the people more determined to renounce terrorism and the rule of strangers, as the three-month rule of those criminal gangs has changed the [...]
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Islamists occupying northern Mali on Wednesday banned all music except the singing of Quranic verses on private radio stations, in line with sharia, the strict Islamic law they are enforcing.
Whether Madonna, Rihanna or Youssou Ndour, all non-Muslim lyrics have been declared Satanic.
“We, the mujahideen of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal from now on refuse the broadcasting of all western music on radios on Islamic land,” said Oussama Ould Abdel Kader, a spokesman for the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West [...]
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Mali was once a model of African democracy. But ever since a military coup in March, Islamists have been on the march and have already imposed Sharia law in the country’s north. There are fears that Mali could join Somalia as another failed state.
Colonel Moussa Maiga has summoned up his entire army of 700 volunteers, who are now standing at attention in sandals. “Right face!” he shouts. The men step on each other’s feet and stumble their way into a [...]
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Omar Ould Hamaha (pictured), the military commander of Ansar Dine or “Defenders of the Faith”, which has scored a stunning victory in Mali against the failed state’s armed forces, now controls a region larger than France which includes three paved runways that could be used to fly in weapons or drugs.
He said: “Even if they (western forces) don’t come here, when we have finished conquering France, we will come to the USA, we will come to London and conquer the [...]
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Militant Islamists in Mali have cut off a man’s hand as punishment for theft in the northern town of Ansongo.
A crowd in the village square pleaded in vain with the militants to spare the man, Reuters news agency reports.
Northern Mali has been overrun by Islamist and Tuareg rebels following a coup in Bamako in March.
The Islamists have vowed to implement strict Sharia law, despite strong opposition from the local Muslim population.
Last week, a couple who had sex outside marriage were [...]
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Hundreds of children have been forced into the ranks of armed groups in northern Mali, some serving as soldiers and others used as sex slaves, rights campaigners told reporters Sunday.
“We have several hundred children aged between nine and 17 years old within the ranks of the armed groups including the Islamists who control northern Mali,” said Mamoud Lamine Cisse, president of a Malian child rights coalition.
“After investigations we have corroborating information that these children are used as soldiers, minesweepers, scouts, [...]
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An al-Qaeda-linked Islamic militant group in control of northern Mali stoned to death a married couple accused of engaging in extramarital affairs, the group’s spokesperson said.
The couple were publicly executed in the remote town of Aguelhok, near the vast West African nation’s northern border with Algeria, on Sunday, a spokesperson for the Ansar Dine group told Reuters.
“These two people were married and had extra-conjugal relations. Our men on the ground in Aguelhok applied sharia (Islamic law),” said Sanda Ould Bounama, [...]
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A spokesman for the Islamic group controlling northern Mali says a couple who had an adulterous relationship was stoned to death this weekend in the town of Aguelhok.
Sanda Abou Mohamed, a spokesman for the group Ansar Dine, told The Associated Press by telephone on Sunday that the couple was executed according to Shariah law.
A resident of the northern city of Kidal, who had spoken to witnesses in nearby Aguelhok, said the man and woman were buried up to their necks, [...]
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Muslims in northern Mali have briefly detained about 90 protesters and whipped them in an apparent attempt to intimidate the locals, a witness said today.
Resident Hama Cisse of Goundam town, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Timbuktu, said members of the Islamic sect Ansar Dine went from door to door in the morning to arrest the leaders of a protest against them.
The protest erupted Friday after a young Islamist militant whipped a woman carrying a baby for not wearing [...]
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The Truth on the Encroachment of Global Islamism
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