In Mali on Thursday, two political opposition leaders went missing, sparking fears they may have been forcibly disappeared.
Abba Alhassane, 68, is the secretary general of the opposition party Convergence for the Development of Mali (Convergence pour le développement du Mali, or CODEM). His colleagues said that on May 8, 2025, masked gunmen claiming to be gendarmes arrested him at his home in the capital, Bamako, and took him away in an unmarked car.
The same day, unidentified men took El Bachir Thiam, a leader of The Change party (Le changement, or YELEMA) off the streets of Kati town, about 15 kilometers from Bamako, according to party members and local media.
Alhassane and Thiam’s colleagues said they have searched for them in police and gendarmerie stations across Bamako and Kati to no avail. Authorities have not provided any information on their whereabouts, nor have they indicated if their cases are being investigated.
Both leaders’ parties were involved in a large gathering that Mali’s political opposition organized on May 3 to protest the military junta’s April 30 decision to dissolve all political parties and name the junta’s leader, Gen. Assimi Goïta, as president until 2030.
General Goïta, who took power in a 2021 coup, has repeatedly promised to hold elections but has continued to delay the restoration of civilian rule. The military authorities have also jailed and forcibly disappeared political opponents, activists, and dissidents, and severely restricted freedom of expression and association.
During the May 3 gathering, hundreds of people took to Bamako’s streets. At least 80 political parties and 2 civil society organizations drafted a declaration calling for the junta to return Mali to civilian rule by December 31, 2025, create a timetable for the return to the constitutional order, and release political prisoners.
The Malian Council of Ministers responded by suspending all political activities in the country, citing the need to maintain public order.
International human rights law defines enforced disappearance as the detention of a person by state officials or their agents and a refusal to acknowledge the detention or to reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts. “Disappeared” people are at high risk of grave abuse.
The disappearance of Alhassane and Thiam sends a chilling message to the political opposition in Mali. The junta should immediately disclose their whereabouts and release them.