source: Al Jazeera
A court in Mali has sentenced 46 soldiers from Ivory Coast to 20 years imprisonment for conspiring against the government, and three others to death in absentia.
Ivory Coast announced last month it would withdraw its remaining soldiers from the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali.
The soldiers were also fined more than $3,000 and convicted of carrying and transporting weapons, Prosecutor General Ladji Sara said in a statement on Friday.
Forty-nine Ivorian soldiers were arrested at the airport in Mali’s capital Bamako in July, three of whom were later released. Their arrests led to a diplomatic row between the neighboring countries and widespread condemnation from regional allies.
The soldiers were detained when they went to work for Sahel Aviation Service, a private company contracted to work in Mali by the United Nations.
Mali’s military administration said the soldiers were acting as mercenaries, while Ivory Coast said they were part of a UN peacekeeping mission.
They were charged with attempting to undermine state security in August and convicted in a trial that began on Thursday and ended on Friday, ahead of a January 1 deadline set by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the region’s main political and economic bloc, to release them or face sanctions.
