Lawfare Daily: Prosecuting the Sahel's War Influencers with Lindsay Freeman

[Intro]

Lindsay Freeman: They think it makes them look cool to show that they're the toughest ones around and their brand kind of is, you bring us in and we'll do what other groups won't do.

Tyler McBrien: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare with Lindsay Freeman, director of Technology, Law & Policy at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Lindsay Freeman: The real concern here is that things that people see online motivate people to do things in real life. It doesn't just stay online in this digital world, but actually, you know, can spread violence. And you see this with the trends, with the different posting of violence and the escalation. You see them trying to outdo each other and certain trends starting.  

Tyler McBrien: Today we're talking about why so-called war influencers in the Sahel are posting incriminating conflict content online and what can be done about it. A quick note for our listeners, this episode contains some depictions of graphic violence.

[Main Podcast]

So Lindsay, I wanna start with your Lawfare article that was published on June 23rd called “War Crimes for Fun and Profit.” And I wanna start with this term that you begin your piece with of the war influencer. Just to unpack that a bit for the listeners who may be unfamiliar, you know, why did you use that term? What is a war influencer and what do they do?

Lindsay Freeman: So just as in our normal culture, we have style influencers, lifestyle influencers.

In conflict zones, more and more you see the use of social media by a lot of different actors in the conflict zone, and you see many of these actors sharing intelligence commenting on what's happening and sometimes intentionally trying to influence the situation on the ground. You even have situations where both parties to the conflict are trolling each other and kind of taking the physical conflict online and posting about what's going on there.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, I know, and so you, you talk a bit about this conflict content, and I know listeners will soon find out, or anyone who's read the article, that we will specifically be talking about the Wagner Group and their operations in the Sahel. So first I wanna ask, you know, is this, how prevalent this phenomenon is across the world?

And then I wanna talk a bit about the Wagner Group. So first, you know, what is the scale of this conflict content? Where do we see it cropping up? What regions, what, what conflicts?  

Lindsay Freeman: Well, we see it everywhere and obviously the first one that comes to mind is Ukraine. I would say before Ukraine, you definitely had a lot of social media in conflict, and often Syria is used as the example. Starting in 2011, it was already time where smartphones and social media were on the scene, and a lot of journalists couldn't get into Syria, so sort of citizen journalists took up the effort to document what was going on, posting it mainly on YouTube at the time. This has obviously evolved into different conflicts, and in the case of Ukraine, you have the perpetrators also posting.

Certainly between Russia and Ukraine, there's a lot of different ways they're trying to shape the information space, and that's been a big part of it. You also see that in the Israel Gaza context, in pretty much every conflict now. And in those other contexts, a lot of people have written about them, especially Ukraine, but a lot fewer people are talking about how it's playing out in the Sahel, in different African countries where it's very prevalent too.

Tyler McBrien: And so one more point of clarification before we dive into the, the Sahel case. Is the term conflict content a neutral one, or is it generally used in the pejorative sense? I mean, it's, it, I think by, by virtue of it, of it being about conflict, it will be graphic in nature, often. But is it, it seems like it could be both a tool for human rights investigators, but then also this propagandistic tool. So how is the, how is that term generally used?

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah, I think of conflict content as a pretty neutral term, sort of the overarching one. And then you can sort of break it down and categorize it in different ways, which as we're looking at it, is open source researchers and analysts sort of categorizing different types of content. But the conflict content can be used as evidence in some cases, certainly as intelligence or lead information when investigating potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But it can also be used in a malicious way. Kind of like any technology, it can be used for good and it can be used for bad. So it's really up to the intent of the person using the technology and how they're using it. And so in this case, it's a lot of different things and conflict content just seemed like the easier sort of overarching word to talk about it.

Tyler McBrien: I also wanna bring in the Article 15 submission that you and a team of lawyers at UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center submitted back in October 2024, I believe if I'm not mistaken. So first I want to just use that as a way of, of opening up the conversation about the Wagner Group. So can you just take us back to, to last year as you're putting this together, why focus on the Wagner Group and, and what is the, the purpose of this this kind of submission to the ICC?

Lindsay Freeman: Okay, well, I'm actually gonna take you back a bit further than that since we started this investigation more than two years ago, maybe almost three years ago now, in sort of the fall of 2022, we had already been investigating some of what was happening in Ukraine, focus more on cyber attacks and the cyber conflict that was happening between Russia and Ukraine.

And I think because we were working in the Ukraine space, we started talking to some other groups that were working on Wagner. And through those conversations that got us interested in the topic. And because at the Berkeley Human Rights Center, our sort of main specialization is open aource investigations or OSINT, and the Wagner Group is a group that's just very online. It really lent itself well to a topic we thought we could do justice to, that there would be a lot of material we could use.

And so in the fall of 2022, I had some law students working with my core team, and we did a pre investigation scoping exercise over the course of a year where we looked at the Wagner Group's operations in six different countries. So Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic, and Mali. Those were the main countries Wagner was operating in.

But also for the African countries and Ukraine, those are cases where the ICC has jurisdiction and open investigations going. So if the ICC has already opened an investigation, it kind of makes it easier to bring new cases because they're already looking at it and have gone through that process.

Through that pre-investigation scoping and research, some patterns emerged into the different operations in each country. And from that, we sort of developed some working hypotheses and case theories and narrowed down to looking at Sudan, Central African Republic, and Mali. And at that time we were a bit focused on events that had happened right after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In 2022, we saw a pattern of an escalation of violence against civilians around gold mining areas. So we kinda had a working case theory that pressure from was coming from above because Russia didn't take Kyiv as quickly as they thought more sanctions were coming. And so there was more financial pressure to get money and in invade evade sanctions.

So we were looking at the idea of doing sort of multi territorial crimes against humanity case, but after Prigozhin’s plane was downed and Utkin and other Wagner leadership was on that plane. At a certain point, we had to realize that there wasn't a key person we could hold responsible for activities across the three different countries, at least for the incidents we had identified. So we decided to put all our resources into one country and go really deep.

Mali stood out for several reasons, but one was because the Malian government had asked the UN mission to leave. The French had withdrawn and they weren't letting journalists in, so it seemed like Mali was sort of a forgotten area. And we didn't in the human rights space really know of many other groups working on what was happening in Mali, so we thought that would be a valuable use of our time to dig in.

It's also one of the more recent countries Wagner entered. So we thought we'd be able to tell the story from before they even entered the country, what happened when they first entered, and what has happened since.

Tyler McBrien: And just a quick follow up on this legal strategy question of, of, of just drilling down of why did Prigozhin’s death complicate this for you? So, especially when the links between the Wagner Group/Africa Corps and Russia are a bit muddied, but fairly clear. So, in other words, why is this case unique or why is, you know, prosecuting the Wagner Group unique, especially because they are so linked to an actual state, Russia.

Lindsay Freeman: When you're focused on the International Criminal Court or universal jurisdiction cases in which international crimes have occurred, you're focused on individual criminal responsibility rather than state responsibility. If you have a court, if the International Court of Justice, or in human rights courts, the focus is more on the state's responsibility.

But because you're proving the role of an individual in the crime, you need a lot of evidence and to be really, really specific about what that individual's role was in it. As investigators, we have to follow the evidence, and as non-law enforcement, we have to follow the evidence that we have access to, which is publicly available information as well as human intelligence experts and those kinds of sources of information.

So, with the Wagner Group, Prigozhin was kind of the clear leadership in it and in terms of setting up their operations in Africa he had traveled to several of the African places and so had a degree of control and understanding of what was going on there. He was part of the deals for the Wagner Group to enter those countries, and very integral to sort of what was happening on the ground at that period of time.

And you know, one thing that was interesting, which we can kind of say in hindsight since we've been watching the group for a long time, is at least for their operations in Mali, it did not change significantly after his death, and they've sort of kept their operations going, so that might indicate maybe he was less significant than we, we thought he was.

But because the ICC focuses on, tends to focus on those most responsible or the big fish in terms of sort of pitching a case or getting the ICC interested in a case, Prigozhin when he was alive was, or the obvious individual to focus on. And he was that connector link between the Russian government and the Wagner Group on the ground in Africa. With his death, it sort of broke the chain of custody that we had mapped out.

Tyler McBrien: Now let's talk about some of the evidence. So once you've, you decided to, to dig deep on Mali, and you had been seeing some of this conflict content posted, take us through what, what happens next? As you begin to put together your Article 15 submission, what kind of evidence are you collecting and, and how are you collecting it? And then what are, what were some of the big findings of this legal brief?

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah, so you know, we focus on open source information and what's online, and that really entails a range of different sources and some of it's secondary sources. You know, news reports, media, online, although as I said, that's limited 'cause there weren't a lot of on the ground journalists in Mali.

Some of it is firsthand posting from different individuals, but of course, online verification is always a tricky issue and something you have to go through, even though it might be firsthand or it might be secondhand, you sort of don't know initially when you see something posted online, so you have to trace its providence to understand the evidence. It might be social media posts.

Lots of official government records were used, and then other sets of data. So we looked at import export data. We looked at flight records, so you know, mapping out when weapon shipments were coming in, what kind of equipment they were using.

There's quite a lot of drone activity in Mali, which people might not realize. And so looking at the drones was one. That's also, the drones have been helpful in terms of producing more visual content because both sides of the conflict are using drones. So you have some of the counterinsurgency or the insurgent groups in Mali who use drones themselves and have caught Wagner doing things with drone footage.

Satellite imagery definitely plays a big role. It's a whole, a whole mixture of things. I mean, it really is like putting together a 10,000 piece puzzle where you're using lots of little data points instead of maybe a traditional criminal investigation where you have a few big pieces of evidence. This is really little micro pieces that you're putting together to understand the situation of what happened.

Tyler McBrien: And just, and without, you know, having to go into all of the, the graphic and gory details of the content, what was being depicted in, in some of the, the conflict content you saw. And then, I mean, to your last point, as you started to piece together these little pieces of evidence, what bigger picture emerged?

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah, so with the Wagner Group's own content that they're posting online, we sort of mapped out over 150 different Telegram channels and accounts. There's also a lot of information on VK, which is the Russian social media, and some of it on Twitter. I will say this is one where both sides are posting very graphic things.

It's not limited to the Wagner side, although theirs does seem to be more egregious in some ways in terms of what's being posted and. Yeah, so they post really graphical content that, you know, part of what's been hard to get journalists to tell this story, even in terms of drafting the submission to the ICC, is sort of knowing how much detail to give, because it's really, really hard to understand it without seeing it and seeing it is really traumatizing.

So that was a really difficult part of this investigation. Like I've been doing more war crimes investigations for over a decade, and this by far was one of the hardest ones, just in terms of secondary trauma for the team and seeing this really graphic imagery.

But some of it is posting of what they're doing sort of on the convoy or movement. So you're tracking their movement from town to town. Some of it is aftermath of what they're doing. Some of it is videotaping them actually committing the crimes. And it's gotten into lots and lots of beheadings, castration, mutilation, and dismembering of bodies. Kind of the worst things you can imagine is what you see in their channels.

And as I said, the other side posts some of this too. Certainly in the aftermath of showing what they've done, you also have victims groups who go in and document it, and that's very graphic as well. But their intent in posting it is obviously different. Their intent is to inform the public to get accountability.

So it's different than the Wagner content where they're mocking it, the commentary has a very different tone, and in some cases using it to terrorize the civilian population. In one of the incidents we mentioned in our brief is the takeover of Kidal in October/November 2023, and in that case, they had Wagner and the Malian armed forces had a joint convoy sort of moving up a certain route in Mali from one of their bases towards Kidal over about five or six weeks.

And there was sort of at each stop along the way, a barrage of beheadings or things happening in that town, which they would then post, and as they got closer, more towns of people were fleeing. So you had a huge amount of internally displaced persons from this conflict to the point by the time they got to Kidal, a lot of people had already fled the area, it was easy to take over.

So it was almost the information operation itself gave them the operational advantage more so than the weapons they had.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, I wanna, I wanna talk about that and I, I also wanna bring up one thing that really stuck out to me from your piece was this very disorienting fact that it's, especially on the Wagner Group side, they're not only posting these gory graphic videos and, and images, they're also, you know, posting sort of, I, I hesitate to use this word, but lighthearted content about the, you know, hanging out with each other and going on a safari and seeing these sites.

So I, I bring that up to ask what probably a lot of our listeners are thinking, which is why the hell are they posting this extremely self-incriminating evidence, essentially on open social media channels? And I think this, that, this gets at the question of, you know, what are, what is the purpose of, of these information operations?

So you already kind of laid on the table this intimidation factor, but, but what else is the purpose of, of posting, which, which would override the risk of, of incrimination.

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah, I mean, I think on some degrees they're just focused on what they're doing and their own community, so they're not really thinking about how other people might be seeing this, even though that it's an open forum, I think they're not giving it a lot of forethought. A lot of these guys are young and you know, just generationally what people share has changed over time. So they're sharing a lot about what's happening and maybe not giving it that much thought.

Certainly the piece on Lawfare as well as the article in Associated Press that came out and then a couple days later, one in Jeune Afrique that really details one of the Telegram channels ‘White Uncles in Africa,’ you know, since those were posted, they're talking about it and you know, some surprise that other people have been seeing what they're doing.

But I think, you know, it's multifaceted how these are used. And there's different channels. I mean, of these more than 150 plus channels we've categorized them. I mean, some are Africa specific, some are Ukraine specific or Syria specific. Some are more towards a Russian audience. Some are more towards an African audience. Some are towards a more international audience. Sometimes they're posting different languages, which helps you know who they're talking to.

So different channels have formed around different things, but I think sort of first and foremost is the Wagner brand is really powerful. I think it's one of the reasons after Prigozhin’s death, you know, the Kremlin tried to take it over with Africa Corps and you know, replace the name and reform it and that has been really slow to happen because there's so much value in the Wagner brand itself and what they've cultivated and yeah, the prestige that comes with it.

So for us, we might not be able to understand why showing how many people you've beheaded makes you this badass warrior that people wanna join the group. But that is the reality on the ground there, that they think it makes them look cool to show that they're the toughest ones around. And their brand kind of is you bring us in and we'll do what other groups won't do.

 You know, if you, if you bring in, you know, in Mali the French, for years were helping with the counterterrorism, counterinsurgency operations, but they follow international law. So the selling point for Wagner to Mali is we're not gonna be restricted by the bounds of international humanitarian law. We're gonna do what they don't do and fight dirty.

Tyler McBrien: Since you brought it up, I have to ask what chatter you have seen on these channels about your submission, about the coverage just in the past few days since, since these articles came out?

Lindsay Freeman: Well, the most interesting thing is this morning the premium channel for ‘White Uncles in Africa’ was shut down, and that was the one where they were getting paid. So it does seem their wallet was taken away on Telegram with no warning. And they've posted about that in the, in the mainstream.

I don't know if they've seen the Lawfare article. There hasn't been that mentioned specifically, but the other articles they are talking about, and I think there's some confusion around it and just debates going on. But I think from the article, they don't fully understand what the submission was.

And it's kind of further confused because about a week or two weeks ago several sort of victims organizations and other groups, the Azawad groups, the  Tuaregs had gone to the Hague and made a submission of their own on Wagner's activities on the ground. Also, the Associated Press article that talks about our submission and what we've talked about publicly really focuses on the social media because that is kind of an interesting hook that makes it different. But our submission also is very much about the physical crimes that they're committing on the ground.

I mean, one interesting thing in the channels we're seeing is some of them are sort of arguing or correcting each other on what the laws of war are and what applies. So in some way, as a first step, we've gotten them talking about what the laws of armed conflict are and what constitutes a war crime and what doesn't. So in some ways, maybe that's progress, but I think as one remarked, I don't have the quote in front of me, it's, so basically everything we do on the internet is a violation, and that's pretty much accurate, in some ways.

Tyler McBrien: It's like they're so close to getting it. I actually want to stay on Telegram for just another beat. I assume that this is all going down on Telegram because it is permissive to this type of content, low content moderation, policies, encryption, anonymity, and yet now Telegram has suspended this, at least this one premium channel.

The stuff that is being posted on Telegram is being used potentially to build cases against them. Do you see potentially the Wagner Group and other PMCs moving to other platforms? Did it surprise you that Telegram actually suspended this channel? What is, what do you see as, as Telegram’s role here and responsibility in terms of posting this content and, and con and letting it proliferate?

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah, well even those in some of these channels made the argument that why is the focus on us? Everyone's doing this and there's quite a lot of other bad content on Telegram. So why was it only our channel that was shut down? You know, Telegram is a tricky one from other social media. Well, they've definitely used Telegram because of the lack of rules, the lack of content moderation, and up until recently, Telegram’s position of not cooperating for with law enforcement.

Last year, I believe at some point the head of Telegram was arrested in France and there are legal proceedings around that and there has been some reporting that their cooperation with law enforcement has improved since then, but still they have not taken much action to shut things down. And I think it's interesting that they only shut down sort of main premium channel where they're making money off of it themselves, because that could be another level of liability and implicate the company itself.

But yes, I think they will move to, you know, if you shut down one, they might move to other ones. Although, you know, some of this content is so dehumanizing for the people that are posted it, you know that the images are posted, that I do think just being able to shut it down, maybe they'll move to somewhere else, but getting it offline, you know, pictures of people dead and naked and you know, positioned, like there's one image where they position it to look like one of the dead bodies is making love to a goat. You know, these are really horrible, demeaning, dehumanizing images.

So getting them taken down I think is a good thing. Even if the evidence was helpful in proving that they're committing crimes on the ground, it's just trying to make it harder for them to be able to do this. And you know, if you put pressure on the different social media to do content moderation then perhaps one day there won't be at home for this content online.

Tyler McBrien: You asked this question in your piece, which I think is really at the heart of the entire article with, which is, with so much evidence of blatant criminality, why has there been so little accountability for the Wagner Group? You also call it this impunity gap. It's a form of impunity.

So I think you know, the Telegram social media platform aspect is, is just one part of the story. I think international criminal justice institutions is another. So in, in your view, why has this impunity continued? And then I, you, really get into the, the effects of this. So, so what are the negative impacts of continued impunity for these perpetrators?

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah, so I'll take that in two parts. And so first the question of why there hasn't been accountability. Some ways, I don't know. I think this is a really, really strong case for the ICC, and of course I don't work there. Since the sanctions with the U.S., I haven't spoken to anyone there. And even if I could speak to them, they're not gonna tell somebody on the outside what's happening in the investigation.

So I don't know that they're not pursuing this. They might be, but it has been a long period that this is going on, so I am surprised we haven't seen anything come out yet, because it seems like such a strong and obvious case to choose.

Tyler McBrien: I'll just jump in quickly. In the AP story, they obviously did their due diligence, the ICC, and this is from the AP story, the ICC told the AP it could not comment on the brief, but it said that it was aware of various reports of alleged massive human rights violations and it's following closely. And then an amusing, I think, semi amusing next line Wagner did not respond to questions about the videos, which is I think wholly unsurprising. But, but to get, to, to get back to, you know, part two of the question, what are, you know, what are the negative effects of, of continued impunity?

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah. Well, just one more point on the accountability itself, because I've been working on another article about this is in the history of international criminal law, there has never been a trial or even investigation we know about into any private military actor. So the impunity gap is really wide in terms of, you know, dealing with modern day mercenaries.

And one thing that's interesting is when the ICC was started when the ad hoc tribunals came up. The sort of first iteration of modern mercenaries with executive outcomes in Sandline International were getting into scandals for committing huge atrocities and you know, two or three decades in, the ICC really has never had a prosecutor that has prioritized for profit military actors as a target.

They've always been really focused on state actors and heads of state, which has in some ways backfired because one of the biggest issues the ICC faces is a lack of state cooperation and state support. So this is one where I think it's such an obvious win-win because I think you're gonna have more consensus around a group like the Wagner Group, then some of the sort of political hot potato conflicts and issuing arrest warrants against sitting heads of state where you have immunity issues and there's really a lot of controversy around that and not a lot of potential for arrest. I do think these guys in the Wagner Group, they're traveling to different countries and there would be opportunity for arrest and cooperation. So to me it is a bit of a mystery 'cause it seems so obvious that this should be something on the agenda for any ICC prosecutor, but especially now.

To get to the second part of your question on the, the problems with impunity, I mean, other than it just undermining the rule of law, sort of undermines civilization altogether if you don't have security, law enforcement processes that you can ju, trust ways to get justice when people have been wronged there's sort of the obvious issues with that.

But I think with the posting of this content online, I mean, one of the things is the tone of it is showing this group as badass and kind of cool and targeting to young men in a very similar way that some of the sort of manosphere podcasts are as well. And there is some overlap.

It wasn't the Wagner Group, but I think it was Rusich or one of the other Russian PMCs was selling protein powder. And ironically the only flavor was white chocolate, which I think was a nod to their own racism. They're, they kind of have inside jokes around that. But you know, the selling of protein powder or something very similar to a lot of these other podcasts that are targeting young men and trying to bring them into the fold.

And the real concern here is that things that people see online motivate people to do things in real life. It doesn't just stay online in this digital world, but actually, you know, can spread violence. And you see this with the trends, with the different posting of violence and the escalation. You see them trying to outdo each other and certain trends starting.

You know, it went from the beheading to the castration. And you know, one day there's one guy that was castrated, and then the next, there's six that are. And then another one, you know, tries to outdo one of the beheadings by putting, you know six heads in trees, and then the next, there's nine. And you know, they're trying to iterate on the violence and outdo each other, but it's just not limited to the region and that conflict.

Obviously by the numbers, there are a lot of people watching, and you know, not just in the group, but even if there aren't participants or subscribers, this stuff gets shared in WhatsApp and other private channels. So it's really hard to track who all has seen it and what kind of influences this has.

And also just as researchers I can say, you know, having gone through it, it puts you in a really dark place. So it is really unhealthy for psychological wellbeing and probably any of the people, even members of the group themselves, are kind of psychologically harmed by their engagement in these groups.

Tyler McBrien: I think it brings us back to why the term war influencer is so apt in the first place. It's, they're influencers in every sense of the word, with all of the corrosive effects of social media that that brings only multiplied by the, the heinous nature of the content and, and what they're actually influencing.

And I was also very struck by something in your piece that it's, it's almost like we need to move beyond the concept of the viral video because of the scale it's live streaming or 24/7 streaming is more apt just given the, the steady feed of content on these Telegram channels and, and how many there are. Which was a very troubling realization that it was just, just how much is out there and, and how often it's being spread.

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah, and I, I think there is a comparison to me made to, or it's a bigger phenomenon we see today where when people admit things out loud in the public, even if it's crimes, it somehow seems like less of a crime or it sort of gets normalized when corruption is open. You know, we see this in different places, so it's the normalizing of it that's really problematic, that people are no longer shocked. It's lost its shock value.

And I think there are still some prejudices towards open source information of thinking that if things are happening in private and secret and they're being protective over it, it's more illicit, it is more of a crime than them posting it openly. So I think, yeah, there needs to be a mental shift in showing that a lot of information you can find publicly available is very clear evidence of criminality and it should be used by people to hold them accountable. I think some of it is also just getting overwhelmed by the sheer mass of it.

You know, it feels that, I think in some ways like the cat is out of the bag and it's very overwhelming. So how do you. Now try and enforce these laws and hold people accountable when so many people are getting in on the action.

Tyler McBrien: So I wanna close here with looking forward. It's a bit hard to tell because as you mentioned, the ICC is now a, a black box for, for several reasons after the submission was sent.

So, I guess two, two related questions. You know, what, what, what is happening now as far as you know, and then what do you hope will happen in terms of the ICC pursuing a prosecution or, or, you know, or even things happening outside of the ICC in terms of accountability and justice?

Lindsay Freeman: Yeah. Well, I think that's one important point to make is that international criminal justice is not just the ICC and there are other forums these cases could be tried. More and more national jurisdictions are recognizing this principle of universal jurisdiction where for cases that are particularly grave, you know, Rome Statute cases like genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, that they are really crimes against all of humanity and therefore can be tried anywhere.

In actual practice, every country has their own rules around this, and usually there has to be some hook or state interest to make a national law enforcement authority pursue these cases. But I think there are several countries with universal jurisdiction that, for various reasons, have an interest in an and an investment in kind of pursuing them, so I do think that's an avenue.

I still am holding hope for the ICC that it gets through these hard times and that it is able to have some successful cases. And yeah, I'll just reiterate that I think this one would bring a lot of good, good will to it and maybe rally people around to help. And I think they could have a really successful case here, given the overwhelming amount of evidence in just the clear cut bad actors and bad intent in, in the case of Wagner and Mali.

But yeah, so I mean, our hope is that we will see individuals being held liable for this in actual criminal cases and trials, which you know are important for several reasons. If we have these public trials, it gives the victims an opportunity to have a voice and be the ones who are sharing what happened to them.

And you know, in some cases get reparations and it has a deterrent effect, a really important deterrent effect if people are held accountable for this. I do believe in, in the fact that if people are held accountable, it will deter more of this behavior. And so that is our hope that there is several different interventions in Mali and maybe a starting point since it doesn't look like the current government of Mali is going anywhere.

I think they took power by coup and have just given themselves another five years to be in power with no elections. That it is really time to get third parties back in there. And as a government, if they wanna be seen as a legitimate government, they should bring in peacekeepers, either the UN, other countries coming in, independent third party observers that might have an initial step in mitigating some of this violence and go from there.

Tyler McBrien: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

Lindsay Freeman: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Tyler McBrien: The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad-free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter at our website, lawfaremedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters.

Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for our other podcasts, including Rational Security, Allies, the Aftermath, and Escalation, our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. Check out our written work at lawfaremedia.org. The podcast is edited by Jen Patja and our audio engineer. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As always, thanks for listening.