Presidential pardon for French alleged spy accused of plotting Mali coup

A Frenchman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Mali for plotting an alleged coup in the West African country has now been granted a presidential pardon, it was announced on Thursday.

Yann Vezilier was accused a year ago of trying to destabilise President Assimi Goïta's government "on behalf of the French intelligence service" alongside a number of army generals and dozens of soldiers.

France's foreign ministry has yet to comment on the pardoning, and previously said accusations that Vezilier was working in Mali as a French spy were "unfounded".

In a post on Facebook , external , the Malian government said: "This act of clemency, which does not call into question the facts established by an adversarial judgment rendered during a trial, where all rights of the defence were respected, is accompanied by the immediate removal of the individual from national territory."

How an al-Qaeda offshoot became one of Africa's deadliest militant groups

Mali is a former colony of France, and has been gripped by a security crisis fuelled by an Islamist insurgency since 2012. It was one of the reasons given for Goïta leading a coup in 2021 but attacks by jihadist groups have continued and even increased.

At the time of the arrests last year, Mali's Security Minister Gen Daoud Aly Mohammedine said "fringe elements of the Malian armed security forces" had been detained for seeking to "destabilise the institutions of the republic".

"These soldiers and civilians" were said to have obtained "the help of foreign states", the minister said.