Six allies of Mali's former president face appeal court hearing

Six men linked to Mali’s former transitional president Bah N’Daw appeared before the Bamako Court of Appeal on July 14 in a case that is testing whether the country’s post-coup courts can handle politically sensitive prosecutions without becoming an instrument of military rule. The men are accused of conspiring against the government, but authorities have not publicly detailed the specific acts they are said to have planned or carried out.

The defendants include Colonel Kassoum Goïta, a former head of intelligence who is not related to transitional President Assimi Goïta, and Kalilou Doumbia, the former secretary-general at the presidency. The other accused are a senior State Security officer, a police commissioner, a businessman and a marabout. Defense lawyers say the absence of a clear factual account makes the case opaque and raises the prospect that it is being used to settle political scores rather than prove a crime in open court.

The lawyers also say the men were abducted, tortured and held for nearly five years, a claim that places the hearing within a wider debate over detention practices and the treatment of people swept up in Mali’s repeated security crackdowns. The defense says a complaint filed in December 2021 against General Modibo Koné, who now heads the security service, has gone nowhere, an outcome they argue reflects the imbalance of power around the case.

The prosecution sits inside the turbulent chain of coups that has shaped Mali since August 18, 2020, when soldiers removed President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. That upheaval was followed by the May 2021 arrests of Bah N’Daw, Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and Defense Minister Souleymane Doucouré. N’Daw and Ouane resigned on May 26, 2021 while still in detention, allowing Assimi Goïta to consolidate power after first taking the role of vice president.

Regional institutions treated the 2021 takeover as a major rupture. A European Parliament summary says Mali was suspended from the African Union, ECOWAS and La Francophonie after the coup. RFI has noted that over nearly six years of transition, Mali has seen repeated accusations against political, military and civil society figures of attempted coup plots or destabilization, a backdrop that makes each new prosecution a test of the judiciary’s independence.

Human Rights Watch said Mali’s human rights situation deteriorated in 2025, with abuses by state security forces and allied forces continuing into the period covered by its 2026 report. That record adds to the stakes in Bamako, where the appeal court’s handling of the case will help determine whether legal institutions are establishing rule of law or simply formalizing the power of the latest military victors.