A court in Mali on Friday sentenced 46 Ivory Coast soldiers to 20 years in prison and executed three others in absentia as punishment for allegedly conspiring against the government.
At the airport in Bamako, the capital of Mali, 49 Ivorian troops were detained in July; three of them were later freed. Their detention sparked a diplomatic row between the neighboring nations and was widely condemned by allies in the area.
The military junta in Mali claimed the men were hired mercenaries, but the government of Ivory Coast insisted they were members of a UN peacekeeping force.
Prior to a deadline of January 1 to release them or face punishment, they were found guilty during a trial that started on Thursday and finished on Friday.
They had been accused with attempting to sabotage state security in August.
Ivory Coast maintained that its soldiers were being held captive and had pleaded repeatedly for their release. The nation made the decision to withdraw its final contingent of soldiers from the U.N. peacekeeping mission public last month.
Mali, one of the most turbulent nations in Africa, has spent the last ten years relying on regional allies and soldiers to keep Islamist terrorists in check after they massacred hundreds of people and took over sizable portions of the country’s central and northern regions.
