Man sentenced to death in Mali for UN peacekeeper killings

By BABA AHMED
Associated Press

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — The U.N. mission in Mali says a court in the West Afican nation’s capital has sentenced a man to death for the killings of three United Nations peacekeepers almost four years ago. The mission reported on Thursday that the court imposed the sentence for a February 2019 attack on five peacekeepers, three of whom died. The slayings happened in the rural Siby area. The U.N. says the death penalty hasn’t been carried out in Mali since 1980 due to a moratorium on executions. Thousands of United Nations peacekeeping troops have been in the country for nearly a decade to protect civilians from extremist violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.