Mali army accused of 'summary executions'

[No Elephants]

Mali's army has sealed off a central town, and joined by other soldiers from the West African bloc, amid allegations that some of its soldiers had summarily executed dozens of people allegedly connected to rebel fighters.

The International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said on Thursday that in the central town of Sevare at least 11 people were executed in a military camp near a bus station and the town's hospital, citing evidence gathered by local researchers.

Credible reports also pointed to around 20 other people having been executed in the same area and the bodies having been dumped in wells or otherwise disposed of, the organisation said.

At Niono, also in the centre of the country, two Malian Tuaregs were executed by Malian soldiers, according to the FIDH.

The rights group, Human Rights Watch, said its investigators had spoken to witnesses who saw the executions of two Tuareg men in the village of Siribala, near Niono.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/01/201312455318869614.html

Savages! Save your pennies or whatever crumby third world currency you can get your hands on, and buy yourselves drones, so you can do that stuff from a distance, the civilized way.


Human Rights Watch, Letter to President Obama re: drone killings in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

http://www.hrw.org/ar/node/94791

More on this topic from HRW: http://www.hrw.org/news-all/683 ("Sorry, the page you requested was not found.")

Obama is at least the third U.S. President to engage in the practice, so he is not unique (which seems to be the only standard by which we measure anything anymore: "Bush did it, too!"). However, Obama has exponentially increased drone killings well beyond what both Clinton or Bush did. But, he's Obama and not a Republican, so it's all good.