Mamadou Hawa Gassama, seen here on a demonstration in 2018, is known for his outspokenness
A Malian lawmaker has been jailed in neighbouring Ivory Coast for three years for insulting the 84-year-old Ivorian leader, who recently won a fourth term in office.
Mamadou Hawa Gassama, who serves in the transitional parliament set up by Mali’s junta, was arrested last July while on a trip to Ivory Coast.
Prosecutors said he described President Alassane Ouattara as a “tyrant”, “an enemy of Mali” and strongly criticised his leadership in interviews and on social media.
Since Mali’s military took power in 2020, relations with Ivory Coast have been strained. Ouattara, an ally of France – the former colonial power in both nations – has been critical of the takeover and other coups in West Africa.
Since the Malian politician’s arrest in Abidjan last July, the authorities in Bamako have not commented on the case.
“We believe that this decision is… excessive… it is very severe,” the AFP news agency quotes Gassama’s lawyer Mamadou Ismaila Konate as saying.
Prosecutors argued that Gassama’s remarks went beyond political critique, accusing him of deliberately seeking to undermine Ivorian institutions and sow discord between the two neighbours.
It is a reminder of the diplomatic row that blew up two years after the coup, when 49 Ivorian soldiers were sentenced in Mali to 20 years in prison for undermining state security.
At the time Ivory Coast denied the allegation and said they had been sent to Mali as part of a UN mission fighting militant Islamists. They were freed after mediation efforts led by Togo.
Since then, Mali’s military leaders have overseen the exit of the UN peacekeeping mission and French forces, which had deployed to Mali in 2013 to help deal with an escalating jihadist insurgency.
Instead it has sought closer ties with Russia – and Russian mercenaries have been brought in to deal with the insecurity affecting several countries in the vast Sahel region.
