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Torture and Forced Disappearances: Inside Wagner’s Secret Prisons in Mali
Since arriving in Mali in 2021, Russian Wagner mercenaries have abducted and detained hundreds of civilians in former UN bases and military camps shared with the Malian army. Our investigation, as part of the Viktoriia project, reveals secret prisons where abuse and torture are carried out with total impunity.
- Since arriving in Mali in late 2021, Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group have arrested, imprisoned and tortured hundreds of civilians.
- Forbidden Stories and its partners have discovered the duplication of the methods used in occupied Ukraine and Russia: illegal detention and systematic use of torture
- They have done so using former UN bases and camps shared with the Malian army. Forbidden Stories and its partners have identified six detention centers where Wagner held civilians between 2022 and 2024.
By Guillaume Vénétitay
June, 12th 2025
The screams no longer reached his ears, drowned out by a blaring, almost deafening sound. “It was their Russian music. They played it every time there was an interrogation,” said aid worker Wangrin*.
In front of him were two other Malian civilians, tied up and captured earlier that day. Each was brought forward, shirtless, and forced before a basin filled with water. The three guards grabbed their heads and plunged them into the container.
“They did it to me three times, until I couldn’t breathe anymore,” recounted Wangrin, who was tortured on August 5, 2024. The guards alternated waterboarding with beatings—hitting their sides and heads, sometimes with batons. “It was like they were killing dogs,” he recalled in a faint voice. “I started crying watching the beatings.”
Wangrin met Forbidden Stories in Bassikounou (Credit: Guillaume Vénétitay / Forbidden Stories).
Wangrin testifying anonymously to Forbidden Stories (Credit: Guillaume Vénétitay / Forbidden Stories)
Wangrin heard the same Russian songs for seven nights straight; a grim sign that the newly arrived prisoners at the Nampala military base in central Mali were now being tortured. Like him, several hundred Malian civilians were reportedly rounded up and secretly detained by Russian Wagner mercenaries, since late 2021.
Forbidden Stories and its partners France 24, Le Monde, and IStories investigated these secret detentions of civilians by Russian mercenaries in Mali. This investigation was carried out as part of the Viktoriia project, in memory of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, captured by Russia in the summer of 2023 while investigating the illegal detention of civilians in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. She was declared dead in captivity on September 19, 2024.
Our investigation reveals the duplication of this system of detention and torture of civilians in Mali by Russian mercenaries. Two continents and two very different contexts, but we found the same patterns : kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, no contact with the outside world, and systematic torture—sometimes to the point of death.
Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to continue the work of reporters who have been killed, imprisoned, or threatened, met with the rare survivors of this system of detention and torture in Mali, where Wagner’s name is synonymous with terror for journalists. “In Mali, and in the north and center in particular, no media outlet dares to talk about Wagner for fear of retaliation” recounted a Malian reporter in a report published in 2023 by Reporters Without Borders. The NGO ranked the country 119th (out of 180) in its World Press Freedom Index. “No journalist on the ground dares to investigate Wagner’s presence,” another reporter said.
Civilians Deliberately Targeted by Wagner and the Malian Army
Following two coups led by Colonel Assimi Goïta in 2020 and 2021, Mali’s ruling junta turned to Russia, enlisting the services of Wagner fighters, often referred to as the “musicians” by the group itself. Wagner is known for their bloody track record in Ukraine, Syria and the Central African Republic (CAR). Under the leadership of Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in August 2023, the group supported Malian military operations against jihadists and Tuareg separatists.
Their deployment was made easier by France’s military withdrawal, finalized in 2022, after nine years of military operations against terror groups in Mali, and the subsequent termination of the UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA) about 18 months later.
“The Malians probably wanted to change the way they wage war and get rid of external scrutiny of their army,” explained Yvan Guichaoua, a researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies. “Bringing in the Russians has direct implications for how force is used.”
Homes set on fire by Wagner mercenaries (Credit: @departamente / Telegram)
Since its deployment, Wagner has been repeatedly accused of committing crimes against civilians while operating alongside the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) in central and northern Mali. “Civilians have been deliberately targeted since Wagner’s arrival,” Guichaoua said. “Security forces tend to view populations living in jihadist-influenced areas as collaborators.”
Our consortium travelled to Mbera, Mauritania, to find survivors of Wagner’s secret prisons in Mali. Approximately 270,000 Malians who fled the combat zones live there, including 118,000 in a camp run by the United Nations. In Mbera – just a stone’s throw from the border, in the Sahara Desert – former detainees can testify more easily than in Mali. By cross-checking these prisoners’ accounts, Forbidden Stories and its partners were able to identify six military bases where Malian civilians were detained and tortured by Wagner between 2022 and 2024 : Bapho, Kidal, Nampala, Niafunké, Sévaré, and Sofara.
Mbera is located just a few dozen kilometers from the Malian border (Credit: Anouk Aflalo Doré / Forbidden Stories).
The Mbera refugee camp, May 2025 (Credit: Guillaume Vénétitay / Forbidden Stories)
Wangrin has been living in Mbera for 10 months but is still haunted by Russian music. After a brief stay in Fassala, a Mauritanian town on the border with Mali, he moved to the camp, where he now lives in a makeshift shelter and searches for NGO work—so far in vain.
To recount his captivity away from prying eyes, he met with Forbidden Stories in Bassikounou, a small town less than 20 kilometres from the camp. He remembers his week in detention in painful detail: a cup of plain white rice with salt as the only meal per day, beatings with “electrical cables” and the vivid memory of a cellmate who could no longer walk after being brutalized.
The day before his arrest in his brother’s shop, a joint FAMa-Wagner patrol had already terrified his village of Nampala. On that Sunday, August 4, 2024, soldiers ordered all men and boys out of their homes. They were assembled on a sports field near a well under the burning sun. “We spent the whole day there. No one knew what was going on,” recalled Wangrin.
As villagers waited, Malian and Wagner troops recorded names, searched homes and beat residents. They were allegedly looking for a walkie-talkie believed to facilitate communication with jihadists from the group called Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM). It was the practical execution of the military’s repeated aim: “hunting down” and “neutralizing” terrorists through its operations.
“Prisons Nearly Everywhere Where Wagner Operates”
Like Wangrin, Mohamed was also apprehended during a raid. On Tuesday, December 6, 2022, the Tuareg medical assistant arrived early at the weekly market in Kita, a village in the Dioura commune in central Mali, not far from the Mauritanian border. It was seven in the morning.
“I was surprised to see helicopters and hear gunfire. As the dust settled, I saw soldiers being dropped off,” he recounted. FAMa troops and Wagner agents began their ground operation, taking the opportunity to loot goods such as drinks, perfumes and meat. Five people were killed and three others wounded by the FAMa and Wagner fire.
A looting operation carried out by Wagner and the Malian Armed Forces (Credit: @Oukidal / X).
That afternoon, Mohamed and eight others were arrested. “They tied me up, blindfolded me, and put me in a helicopter. We were lying down, and the mercenaries pressed their feet into my back. I thought they were taking me away to be executed,” he said.
An hour later, they landed. Prisoners were held in a courtyard and questioned about an alleged jihadist wanted by the Malian soldiers. No one confessed. By the end of the day, the detainees were given a sip of water. Mohamed briefly spoke with another prisoner, who had been held for several days already. “He told us, ‘You’re in Sévaré. Pray you don’t suffer the same fate as we did.’ He had been tortured,” said Mohamed.
“Wagner has prisons in nearly every area where it operates,” explained a Sahel analyst. “Anyone captured and not executed ends up there. Shepherds, shopkeepers, truck drivers.”
The location of the six detention centers identified by Forbidden Stories and its partners (Credit: Anouk Aflalo Doré / Forbidden Stories).”
Several prisons are located within FAMa military bases, which Russian mercenaries sometimes share with Malian troops. Their locations vary depending on ground operations. The total number of active detention centers during Wagner’s mission in the country is likely much higher than the six prisons our consortium identified, as numerous experts informed us.
Satellite imagery analysis, conducted by Forbidden Stories, confirms the presence of two Russian Mi-24/35 helicopters at the Sévaré base during the Kita incident. The construction of a new helicopter hangar started at the end of 2022, according to these images.
Satellite image of the Sévaré airport, showing helicopters, November 26, 2022 (Credit: Airbus DS)
Sometimes, Wagner’s secret prisons occupy symbolic sites, such as former UN bases. In Kidal, a historic Tuareg rebel stronghold in northern Mali, the town’s seizure by FAMa and Wagner in November 2023 was a major victory for Bamako’s junta and their Russian allies—enough for Wagner to momentarily drop its secretive posture. They even hoisted their black flag, emblazoned with a skull, above Kidal’s fort.
The Wagner flag raised over the Kidal fort on November 22, 2023 (Credit: @orchestra_w, Telegram channel affiliated with the Wagner Group).
“That flag was their way of saying they did most of the work,” said Guichaoua from the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies. At its peak, Wagner had over 2,400 men in Mali, many of whom were veterans rotated from battlefields in Ukraine, Syria and the CAR, along with imported equipment and brutal expertise honed elsewhere.
In Kidal, the France 24 Observers, a member of our consortium, identified a Chekan armoured vehicle—custom-built for Wagner—parked among UN storage containers. On August 12, 2024, Ibrahim* was arrested at home by Wagner mercenaries and a FAMa officer, then thrown into one such containers in Kidal. Next to him, there was a 40-year-old man, pantless, barefoot and emaciated after four months in detention. “The other prisoner told me he was only allowed to eat and drink at dusk,” said Ibrahim. He himself was held for 24 hours.
Satellite image of the Kidal base, showing a Chekan armoured vehicule, September 12, 2024 (Credit: Pleiades)
Imprisonment in metal containers is part of Wagner’s modus operandi in Mali. A few hours after his arrest, Ismail was locked in one on January 20, 2024, at the Niafunké base. The 25-year-old tailor, with his adolescent figure and high-pitched voice, remembers the heat inside.
“The container was under direct sunlight. At night, it was pitch black. There were just a few holes for light. There was nothing but a board on the floor,” he recounted. “There were up to 10 of us inside during my 40 days there.”
Prisoners were only allowed out to use a supervised toilet located 15 metres away. “Sometimes they made me do forced labour—loading sand into trucks, digging holes. I wondered if I’d ever leave alive,” recalled Ismail, who said he was beaten unconscious on his first day.
An Atmosphere of Terror
Abuse and torture appear in the testimonies of every former detainee we met. In Nampala, Nawma was detained for four days in early August 2024. During our meeting in a village 30 kilometres from Mbera, the tall Fulani shopkeeper showed Forbidden Stories two scars.
“They beat me until I passed out, and I lost a lot of blood,” he said. “They also burned my stomach with a lighter.” Nawma said that during his detention time he was tied up, naked in a shower.
Nawma, illegally detained and tortured in August 2024, showing one of his scars (Credit: Guillaume Vénétitay / Forbidden Stories).
Nawma standing with village children, seen from behind (Credit: Guillaume Vénétitay / Forbidden Stories).
“Most people die in detention,” said Attaye Ag Mohamed Aboubacrine, Deputy Secretary General of the Kal Akal human rights group. Because of this, Wagner’s name alone inspires fear.
“These disappearances and the abuses committed by FAMa and Wagner—enabled and directed by Russia—are part of a deliberate strategy to sow terror and force populations into exile,” added Boubacar Ould Hamadi, President of the Collective for the Defense of the Rights of the Azawad People (CD-DPA), a human rights organization that recorded 304 abductions or disappearances from October 2024 to March 2025.
FAMa appears unwilling—or unable—to rein in its Russian partners. “Wagner arrests people independently. FAMa has no say,” a Malian officer who asked to remain anonymous told Le Monde, a member of our consortium.
Some prisoners are ransomed. “Many abductions are for financial gain. Often perpetrated in Azawad and central Mali, these practices combine mercenary activities, organized banditry and methods of terror,” said Ag Mohamed Aboubacrine.
Among those who survive, some are later handed over to Malian authorities for legal proceedings. Mohamed says he was transferred to the gendarmerie 48 hours after his arrest in Kita, facing prosecution based on fabricated charges. He was released within a week, after his family allegedly paid nearly 1.5 million CFA francs (nearly 2288 euros, note).
Mohamed, abducted and illegally detained by FAMa soldiers and Wagner mercenaries (Credit: Guillaume Vénétitay / Forbidden Stories)
Mohamed showing Forbidden Stories the notice of dismissal issued after the unfounded charges against him following his abduction (Credit: Guillaume Vénétitay / Forbidden Stories).
For families of the missing—668 cases recorded between November 2023 and April 2025 by Kal Akal—the uncertainty is agonizing. Nomadic herder Moussa* was walking with his two brothers and their sheep near Goundam in February 2025 when a FAMa-Wagner patrol arrested them. After a night in the bush, Moussa, tied up and left behind, watched as his younger brothers were taken away.
“I don’t know if they’re alive. I’d like to know. If they’re no longer in this world and there’s no more hope, at least I could find peace,” he said. Moussa lifted his shirt to show a burn mark. That night, his captors had entertained themselves by burning his chest with a cigarette.
*Name changed at the request of the interviewee.
**Mali’s Ministry of Defence, Russia’s Defence Ministry, the Russian Embassy in Mali and Wagner mercenaries did not respond to requests for comment.
Mission “accomplished”: This is how the Wagner group announced on Friday, June 6, on one of its affiliated Telegram channels, its departure from Mali after three and a half years there. But the Russian presence is far from over and is instead represented by the Africa Corps, a structure directly overseen by Russia’s Ministry of Defence. The partnership is now official—unlike earlier Malian denials portraying Wagner fighters as mere “instructors,” even as evidence mounted of atrocities, like the Moura massacre, where the UN says at least 500 were killed in March 2022.
According to our information, around 1,500 Africa Corps troops—including former Wagner fighters—have gradually arrived since mid-December 2024. Their slow deployment raises concerns in Mali about a more bureaucratic alliance, which stands in stark contrast to Wagner’s battle-ready reputation. Africa Corps has remained discreet in combat zones over the past several weeks, even as jihadists from JNIM have recently inflicted setbacks on FAMa. The current lull in atrocities may not last as Mali’s army is pushing Africa Corps toward the front lines, just like Wagner before them.