The Bah N’Daw allies trial opened on Tuesday before the criminal chambers of the Bamako Court of Appeal, bringing six men accused of plotting against Mali’s military-led government before judges for the first time in nearly five years.
Colonel Kassoum Goïta, a former State Security chief, and Kalilou Doumbia, who served as secretary-general of the presidency during Mali’s first transitional period, lead the list of defendants named in the Bah N’Daw allies trial, according to Africanews. Doumbia held that role between the August 2020 coup and the second putsch of May 2021, when Bah N’Daw himself was removed from office by the same military officers who had installed him.
The remaining defendants in the Bah N’Daw allies trial include a State Security warrant officer, a police commissioner identified in French-language reporting as Moustapha Diakité, a businessman and a marabout. Medafrica Times reports that the group is made up of three civilians and three military personnel, all of whom deny the allegations against them.
Prosecutors accuse the six of attempted conspiracy against the government, though authorities have not publicly disclosed the specific acts underpinning the charge. Defence lawyers say that gap is itself telling, arguing before reporters that the Bah N’Daw allies trial amounts to a political prosecution aimed squarely at figures close to the ousted transitional president rather than at any proven wrongdoing.
According to the defence, the men were seized by State Security agents in the autumn of 2021 and subjected to torture before being placed in prolonged detention, a period lawyers say stretched to nearly five years without their clients facing a courtroom. Africanews notes that their legal team regards Tuesday’s hearing as the first genuine opportunity to contest the charges since the arrests.
Not every twist in the case has run against the defendants. French-language reporting from Dakaractu and allAfrica indicates that Doumbia and Diakité were formally cleared by Malian judicial authorities in June 2022, yet neither man was released from custody at the time. The Bamako Court of Appeal then ordered in January 2023 that all six be referred to the criminal jurisdiction, setting the stage for the trial that finally opened this week.
A separate legal complaint sits unresolved alongside the Bah N’Daw allies trial. In December 2021, defence lawyers lodged a criminal complaint accusing Mali’s current State Security director, General Modibo Koné, of false imprisonment, torture and theft, stemming from his role at the time as the officer overseeing the men’s detention. That complaint has not produced any judicial action to date, according to both Africanews and allAfrica’s sourcing from RFI.
Colonel Goïta, who led Mali’s intelligence services during the first transition, shares no family relation to General Assimi Goïta, the serving transitional president and architect of the 2020 and 2021 coups, a distinction French wire reports have taken care to underline given how frequently the two names are confused in Malian political coverage.
Observers following Mali’s justice system describe the case as among the oldest of a long line of coup plot and destabilisation prosecutions brought against political, military and civil society figures since the country entered military transition nearly six years ago. The Bah N’Daw allies trial is being watched closely as a marker of whether Mali’s courts can deliver a credible verdict on one of the transition’s most contested early episodes.
For now, the six defendants remain formally before the Bamako Court of Appeal, with no date yet confirmed for a verdict as the Bah N’Daw allies trial proceeds.
