The UN mission in Mali has demanded the immediate release of President Ba N’Daou and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane after reports that they had been detained by soldiers.
In a tweet (in French), the Minusma mission also called for calm in the impoverished West African nation.
#Mali Nous suivons avec attention les événements et restons engagés en appui à la Transition. Nous appelons au calme et exigeons la libération immédiate et inconditionnelle du Président et du Premier ministre. Ceux qui les détiennent devront répondre de leurs actes.
— MINUSMA (@UN_MINUSMA) May 24, 2021
The call followed reports that Ba N’Daou, Mali’s interim president, and Ouane had been driven by soldiers to the Kati military camp near the capital, Bamako, and held incommunicado.
The incident raised fears of a second coup in the country within a year.
The defence minister, Souleymane Doucouré, has also reportedly been detained.
Global condemnation
Late on Monday, Ouane told Agence France Presse in a telephone call that soldiers had come “to get him”. The news agency said the line was then cut.
The African Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union and the United States also condemned the arrests, saying Mali’s top politicians must be released without any preconditions.
The reported detentions came just hours after a government reshuffle, in which two senior army officers who took part in last year’s coup were replaced.
Once again Mali is looking unstable, just nine months after the military coup in which President Ibrahim Boubakar Keïta was removed from office, the BBC’s Africa editor Will Ross reports.
He says that although many Malians welcomed Keita’s departure, there is now anger over the dominance of the military in the transitional government and the slow pace of promised reforms.
A previous coup in 2012 led to militant Islamists exploiting the instability to seize territory in northern Mali. French troops helped win back ground, but the Islamist attacks continue.
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