Mali: Unmarried couple stoned to death

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) warns that radical Islamists are gaining influence in Mali. “In the center and the north of the West African country, extremist groups are increasingly intimidating the civilian population and harassing the army and the UN peacekeepers. For example, they have banned the sale of cigarettes and football – and unmarried couples are no longer able to move around in public,” reported Ulrich Delius, the STP’s Africa expert, in Göttingen on Thursday. In the north of the country, an unmarried couple had been stoned to death by Islamists extremists on Tuesday.

According to the STP, the security situation in the north and in the center of Mali has clearly deteriorated since the beginning of the year, and a total number of 311 people got killed in 72 armed conflicts since January 2017. “Neither the UN peacekeepers nor the extensive deployment of Bundeswehr soldiers in Mali were able to significantly reduce the violence. On the contrary, radical Islamists are currently gaining influence and creating precedents under the eyes of the Bundeswehr. They are hoping that the foreign troops will be withdrawn soon, so that they can openly act out their influence. Many Tuareg fear that the Islamists will continue to intimidate the civilian population with targeted attacks so as to enforce Sharia laws,” Delius warned.

Recently, on Wednesday evening, a patrol of the UN blue helmets had been shot at in the city of Kidal. On Monday, two people had been killed in an attack on the village of Ouatagouna – and a soldier and two gendarmes were injured when Islamist extremists opened fire at them in Timbuktu. On the same day, a blue helmet soldier from Burkina Faso was wounded in a firefight with Islamist extremists. In early May, 15 people were killed in several raids and attacks.

The stoning on Tuesday occurred in a region mainly inhabited by Tuareg, between Aguelhoc and Tessalit in northern Mali. Radical Islamists had seized an unmarried couple who had been living together in the village of Taghlit. As Islamic law does not allow this, the couple was stoned to death. According to eyewitnesses, the woman and the man were both buried up to their waists, and four persons threw stones at them until they died. This was the first stoning according to Sharia law in Mali since 2012, when radical Islamists had controlled the region for several months.

Header Photo: United Nations Photo via Flickr