Wagner Group responsible for torture, killings and rampant exploitation of resources in Africa
The Wagner Group is responsible for a raft of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to a new investigative report.
The group had been spearheading Russian attacks in parts of Ukraine before appearing to turn on the Kremlin after falling out with the Russian military over the conduct of the war.
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Warning: The story below contains references to torture techniques
Washington based anti-corruption organisation The Sentry has found that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary group has been “perfecting a nightmarish blueprint for state capture” in the CAR to enable it to plunder the country’s national resources, particularly gold and diamonds.
Over the past five years, soldiers and militiamen have reportedly undergone Wagner training that has involved “ultraviolent” techniques of torture and killing, including how to cut fingers and legs, remove nails, strangle, throw fuel and burn people alive.
In close cooperation with CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, the Wagner Group has significant control over the nation’s political and military leadership, as well as huge sway over its economy.
The report also found that part of Wagner’s training involved “sweeping” or “cleansing” which sources in the Central African military said meant killing everyone, including women and children.
Wagner mercenaries pictured in Mali. Pic: AP
One military source explained: “We kill villagers only, we bury them, or we throw them in the bush.”
A member of the presidential guard discussing the training he received said: “It was a Russian instructor who gave the training … it included commando training, interrogation, aggressive techniques, torture, violence.”
The training can last anywhere between one and six months and involves firearms training, hand-to-hand combat, and espionage, interrogation, and torture techniques, according to the report.
Taking advantage of President Touadera’s ever-increasing need for security and protection, Wagner has tightened its grip on the CAR’s economic resources and constructed a transnational network of shadowy companies and operations stretching from Madagascar, Cameroon, and Sudan all the way back to Moscow.
While Wagner commanders and President Touadéra have justified the group’s presence as a means to hunt down armed rebel groups to protect the regime, The Sentry found that Wagner has taken command and control of government armed forces.
Yevgeny Prigozhin
It has then gone on to order them to execute “cleansing” campaigns to massacre entire communities that might get in the way of the group’s extraction operations.
Soldiers involved in these activities said that Wagner’s intention is to create terror and instil fear, not only among rebels but across the population at large and even among the soldiers and militiamen under its control.
When the group first arrived in early 2018, the CAR had undergone decades of deadly crises that the UN and Western countries had failed to adequately address.
Wagner took advantage of this and has, in just few years and with relatively few personnel, become one of the most powerful forces in the CAR.
Its activities in the CAR are just one aspect of the private army’s operations on the continent, which span numerous countries across Africa including Libya, Sudan, Mali, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Burkina Faso.
Further afield they are also known to have an extensive presence in Syria.
Read more:
Wagner Group rebellion in Russia: How revolt led by ‘Putin’s Chef’ unfolded
‘The end of Wagner as we know it’: What happens to Prigozhin and his private army next
Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadéra
Mining companies affiliated with Wagner, primarily Lobaye Invest, Midas Ressources, and Diamville, have been granted mining licences and export authorisations, allowing the group to use its transnational networks across Africa to help set up industrial-scale gold production, according to the report.
It is also believed that Russia delivered heavy military equipment that had not previously appeared in the CAR conflict, including combat helicopters, aircraft, ground vehicles, reconnaissance drones, and heavy weapons including 14.5 mm heavy machine guns.
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The report even alleges that Wagner has been using landmines in CAR.
The UN Panel of Experts on CAR noted that “deliveries of materiel in support of state security forces were observed at a pace unprecedented since the establishment of the arms embargo in 2013.”
Nathalia Dukhan, Senior Investigator and head of the Wagner programme at The Sentry, said: “The Central African Republic has become Wagner Group’s laboratory of terror.
“With a limited number of military personnel and the active support of President Touadéra, Wagner has managed in just five years to infiltrate and control CAR’s military chain of command, as well as the country’s political and economic systems.
“Russia has revealed its plan for psychological warfare and domination – a truly new kind of ultraviolent colonialism.
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Wagner mutiny: The impact on Ukraine
“Without urgent and coordinated global action to counter this threat, Wagner’s predatory terrorist network will continue to spread and sow devastation wherever it takes root.”
The report urges the US, UK, EU, Canada, Japan and other nations and jurisdictions to widen the scope of sanctions against the group and declare Wagner a terrorist organisation.
The Sentry is an investigative and policy organisation that says it seeks to “disable multinational predatory networks that benefit from violent conflict, repression, and kleptocracy”.
The Syrian presidency has announced it’s assembling a special taskforce to try to stop nearly a week of sectarian clashes in the southern Druze city of Sweida.
The presidency called for restraint on all sides and said it is making strenuous efforts to “stop the fighting and curb the violations that threaten the security of the citizens and the safety of society”.
By early Saturday morning, a ceasefire had been confirmed by the US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, who posted on X that Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a ceasefire supported by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.
The post went on to state that this agreement had the support of “Turkey, Jordan and its neighbours” and called upon the Druze, Bedouins, and Sunni factions to put down their arms.
Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford reports from the road leading to Sweida, the city that has become the epicentre of Syria’s sectarian violence.
For the past 24 hours, we’ve watched as Syria‘s multiple Arab tribes began mobilising in the Sweida province to help defend their Bedouin brethren.
Thousands travelled from multiple different Syrian areas and had reached the edge of Sweida city by Friday nightfall after a day of almost non-stop violent clashes and killings.
“We have come to protect the [Arab] Bedouin women and children who are being terrorised by the Druze,” they told us.
Arab fighters said they had come to protect the Bedouin women and children
Fighters at a petrol station
Every shop and every home in the streets leading up to Sweida city has been burned or ransacked, the contents destroyed or looted.
We saw tribal fighters loading the back of pickup trucks and driving away from the city with vehicles packed with looted goods from Druze homes.
Shops and homes leading up to Sweida city have been burned or ransacked
Several videos posted online showed violence against the Druze, including one where tribal fighters force three men to throw themselves off a high-rise balcony and are seen being shot as they do so.
Doctors at the nearby community hospital in Buser al Harir said there had been a constant stream of casualties being brought in. As we watched, another dead fighter was carried out of an ambulance.
The medics estimated there had been more than 600 dead in their area alone. “The youngest child who was killed was a one-and-a-half-year-old baby,” one doctor told us.
Doctors said there had been a constant stream of casualties due to violence
The violence is the most dangerous outbreak of sectarian clashes since the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime last December – and the most serious challenge for the new leader to navigate.
The newly brokered deal is aimed at ending the sectarian killings and restoring some sort of stability in a country which is emerging from more than a decade of civil war.
Israel and Syria have agreed to a ceasefire, the US ambassador to Turkey has said.
Several hundred people have reportedly been killed this week in the south of Syria in violence involving local fighters, government authorities and Bedouin tribes.
As the violence escalated in the southern province of Sweida, Israel launched airstrikes, including attacks on Wednesday on the defence ministry in Damascus and a target near the presidential palace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said it aimed to protect Syrian Druze – part of a small but influential minority that also has followers in Lebanon and Israel.
In a post on X, the US ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, said Israel and Syria had agreed to a ceasefire supported by Turkey, Jordan and others.
“We call upon Druze, Bedouins, and Sunnis to put down their weapons and together with other minorities build a new and united Syrian identity,” Mr Barrack said in a post on X.
The Israeli embassy in Washington and Syrian Consulate in Canada did not immediately comment or respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.
The ceasefire announcement came after the US worked to put an end to the conflict, with secretary of state Marco Rubio saying on Wednesday that steps had been agreed to end a “troubling and horrifying situation”.
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Why is Israel bombing Syria?
After Israel warned it would destroy forces attacking Syrian Druze, Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa told the minority group in a televised statement on Thursday that “we reject any attempt to drag you into hands of an external party”.
He then claimed Israel has “consistently targeted our stability and created discord among us since the fall of the former regime”.
It comes after the United Nations’ migration agency said earlier on Friday that nearly 80,000 people had been displaced in the region since violence broke out on Sunday.
It also said that essential services, including water and electricity, had collapsed in Sweida, telecommunications systems were widely disrupted, and health facilities in Sweida and Daraa were under severe strain.
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At least three people have been killed after a “horrific incident” at a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department training facility, officials have said.
A spokesperson for the department said there was an explosion at the Biscailuz Center Academy Training in east LA.
The incident was reported at around 7.30am local time (3.30pm UK time).
Aerial footage from local channel KABC-TV suggests the blast happened in a parking lot filled with sheriff patrol cars and box trucks.
The training centre in east LA. Pic: NBC Los Angeles
Attorney general Pam Bondi wrote on X: “I just spoke to @USAttyEssayli about what appears to be a horrific incident that killed at least three at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles.
“Our federal agents are at the scene and we are working to learn more.”
California congressman Jimmy Sanchez said the explosion had “claimed the lives of at least three deputies”.
“My condolences to the families and everyone impacted by this loss,” he said.
Media and law enforcement officials near the explosion site. Pic: AP
The attorney general said in a follow-up post that agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are “on the ground to support”.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said the LAPD bomb squad has also responded to the scene.
“The thoughts of all Angelenos are with all of those impacted by this blast,” she said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed on the incident, his press office said in a post on X.
“The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is in contact with the Sheriff’s Department and closely monitoring the situation, and has offered full state assistance,” it added.
The cause of the explosion is being investigated.
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