Ex-Mali spy chief Diawara arrested, charged over journalist's 2016 disappearance

Moussa Diawara, the former Malian espionage head, has been prosecuted and detained in connection with the disappearance of a journalist in 2016, international reports said citing judicial and security sources. Diawara, who led the West African state's intelligence services under ex-president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, has been charged with participation in the abduction of journalist Birama Toure, according to a legal official.

According to a gendarmerie source, the ex-spy head is currently being held in Bamako, the capital. His arrest comes after Malian investigators requested an arrest warrant for Keita's son, Karim Keita, earlier this month in connection with the same affair.

Birama Toure worked for Le Sphinx before going missing

Before going missing in 2016, Birama Toure worked for the Bamako weekly Le Sphinx and was purportedly chasing a storey that would have harmed Karim Keita's reputation.

Before the army deposed his father in a coup in August 2020, Keita was a prominent figure in Malian industry and politics. The son of the former president, who fled to the Ivory Coast after the coup, has always denied any involvement in Toure's abduction.

Diawara is well-known in Mali for his friendship with Karim Keta, the former deputy and powerful president of the National Assembly's defence committee, who fled to Côte d'Ivoire following his father's fall in August 18, 2020. Colonel Assimi Gota, Mali's leader, is the mastermind behind two putsches in nine months, the first on August 18, 2020, and the second at the end of May.

In early July, a Bamako investigating magistrate issued an international arrest warrant for the former president's son. Birama Toure addressed Karim Keta regarding a file he portrayed as compromising for the president's son, according to Adama Dramé, the director of the Sphinx. Karim Keta, who has consistently denied any role in the reporter's disappearance, has so far refused to appear in front of his country's courts to explain himself.

Birama Toure was tortured for several months

Birama Toure was tortured for several months before being executed "with three shots" at the end of 2016, according to a witness, whose identity RSF does not reveal for security reasons. In a news release issued on Thursday, the organisation praised Moussa Diawara's arrest, calling it "a turning point" after "years of indifference."