A French national accused by Mali’s military-led government of involvement in a plot to destabilise \u200bthe country last year has been sentenced to 20 years \u200cin prison, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, in a case that has strained ties between Bamako and Paris.<\/p>\n
Yann Vezilier is expected to serve his sentence \u200bin Mali following a conviction handed down late on Thursday, the \u200bperson said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were \u2060not authorised to brief the media.<\/p>\n
Mali’s government announced the arrest of Vezilier\u00a0last \u200bAugust, along with two Malian generals, accusing him of acting on behalf \u200bof French intelligence services to mobilise political actors, civil society figures and military officers against Assimi Goita’s government.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s foreign ministry denied the accusations then, saying they were “unfounded” and that \u200bVezilier’s arrest was in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.<\/p>\n
France \u200breiterated the denial following his sentencing. “Our agent was carrying out a security cooperation mission and \u200cin \u2060no form was participating directly or indirectly in destabilising Mali,” the foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n
French diplomatic sources said Paris was increasingly concerned about Vezilier’s health, which they said had been worsening.<\/p>\n
Mali has experienced more than a decade of \u200bunrest fuelled by Islamist \u200binsurgencies in its \u2060desert north and political instability that led to coups in 2020 and 2021, bringing Goita to power.<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for \u200bMali’s government and justice ministry did not respond to Reuters \u200brequests for \u2060comment on Friday.<\/p>\n
Relations between Mali and France, its former colonial ruler, have deteriorated sharply in recent years, part of a broader regional shift that has \u2060also seen \u200bBurkina Faso and Niger distance themselves from \u200bParis.<\/p>\n
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A French national accused by Mali’s military-led government of involvement in a plot to destabilise \u200bthe country last year has been sentenced to 20 years \u200cin prison, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, in a case that has strained ties between Bamako and Paris. Yann Vezilier is expected to serve his sentence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":10,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,1129,27],"tags":[187,4292],"class_list":["post-21065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-mali","tag-yann-vezilier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21066,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21065\/revisions\/21066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}