2007: Seven Tuareg and Arab civilians
December 9th, 2009 Headsman
On this date two years ago, seven civilians were apparently summarily executed by Niger security forces in that country’s long-running internal conflict with its Tuareg population.
Extrajudicial executions have been a recurring event (among the other usual charms of warfare) in Niger’s fight against the Mouvement des Nigériens pour la Justice (MNJ).
Amnesty International charged that these were among 13 civilians executed in a four-week span, possibly in retaliation for MNJ armed attacks.
A close relative of one of the dead told Amnesty International: “We were waiting for our relatives in Agadez when we saw their vehicles arrive driven by soldiers. We asked them where our relatives were. They refused to answer and then, as we insisted, they agreed to drive us to the place where the seven were buried.”
The people who identified the bodies said that they saw numerous signs on the victims of cigarette burns and whipping as well as many bullet wounds to the face and chest.
The nomadic Tuareg people of Niger’s (and neighboring Mali’s) northern Sahara territories have a long-running history of rebellion against the southerly federal government stretching back into the colonial period. (There’s a very detailed pdf paper on the subject here.)
These executions, which also swept up Arab businessmen, were part of the most recent (as of this writing) incarnation, a 2007-2009 campaign that seems ostensibly to have simmered down for now.
But the lucrative, contentious, and damaging (to the Tuareg) uranium mining industry that fuels the conflict (and that put Niger in the American news for the Bush administration’s duplicitous attempt to impute nuclear ambitions to Iraq in order to justify invading) still remains … and that fact seems to promise more bloodshed yet to come.
On this day..
- 1920: Joseph Usefof - 2019
- 1988: Sek Kim Wah, thriller - 2018
- 1947: Rawagede Massacre - 2017
- 2014: Robert Wayne Holsey, despite a drunk lawyer - 2016
- 1754: Eleanor Connor, rogue - 2015
- 1578: Kort Kamphues, outlaw judge - 2014
- 1937: Douglas Van Vlack - 2013
- 1727: An Irish deserter at Gibraltar - 2012
- 1999: James Beathard, on the word of a known liar - 2011
- 1603: The men of the Bye Plot, but not those of the Main Plot - 2010
- 1783: The first hangings at Newgate Prison - 2008
- 1793: Sydney Carton posing as Charles Darnay - 2007
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Borderline "Executions",Businessmen,Cycle of Violence,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Innocent Bystanders,Mass Executions,Niger,No Formal Charge,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Ripped from the Headlines,Shot,Summary Executions
Tags: 2000s, 2007, december 9, iraq war, mining, niger uranium forgeries, resource conflict, tuareg, uranium
