Interpol on Monday issued an international arrest warrant for Karim Keïta, one of the sons of former Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a journalist from investigation in 2016, we learned from a Malian judicial source and from Interpol in Mali.
The “red notice” of Interpol was distributed at the request of an investigating judge of the tribunal de grande instance of commune IV of Bamako, the capital, said a source close to the investigation speaking under the on condition of anonymity. The information was confirmed by an official of the Interpol representative office in Mali who also requested anonymity.
Keïta denies any involvement in the journalist’s disappearance
Malian journalist in his fifties, Birama Touré, who worked for the Bamako weekly The Sphinx until a few months before his disappearance, has not been seen since January 29, 2016, according to his family and the director of the publication, Adama Dramé. The latter say they fear that he was kidnapped, tortured and killed after several months of detention. The director of Sphinx said in 2018 that his ex-reporter had previously approached Karim Keïta about a file he presented as compromising for the president’s son.
Believing to have been defamed by the Sphinx, Karim Keïta, who has always firmly denied any involvement in the disappearance of the reporter, lodged a complaint in 2019 for defamation against the director of the review and against a journalist from a private radio station in Bamako who had opened his antenna to him. However, this complaint was deemed inadmissible on formal grounds by the Malian courts. The director of Sphinx, fearing for his safety, for his part found refuge in France.
Considered by many Malians to personify the corruption of the regime of Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Karim Keïta had escaped arrest after the seizure of power by the officers led by Colonel Assimi Goïta on August 18, 2020. He reappeared a few days more late in Ivory Coast.