Arab jihadis took bloody sharia retribution on Mali's black Africans

The people of Gao endured nine months of amputations and floggings under the rule of Islamist rebels – much of it aimed at ethnic groups.

Incredible... 9 months of atrocities and not a pip from the UN.

(The Guardian) The jihadis carried out amputations in the sandy square where the residents of Gao used to watch basketball. The men who ruled Gao for nine months, until French and Malian troops drove them out last weekend, replaced the words "Place de l'Indépendence" in the green, red and yellow of the national flag with simple white on black: Place de la Sharia.

A thief would lose his right hand. Those accused of burglary would lose both their right hand and left foot. On 21 December last year, people were assembled, as they had been several times before, and told to watch.

"No one was allowed to speak," said Issa Alzouma. "Then they cut off my hand with a knife."

Alzouma had been accused of stealing a motorbike, which he denies. At 39, he made a living digging gravel for construction companies. It was enough to support his wife and three children. Now he roams Gao in tattered clothes, the stump of his right arm wrapped in a grubby bandage, a flimsy black plastic bag dangling from his remaining wrist. Inside he keeps a few antibiotics and replacement bandages given by a Red Cross doctor who treated him at Gao hospital a week after his amputation.

"The doctor had to cut in and remove flesh because it was infected," he said. "Under the bandage you can see my bones. It hurts and I feel as if my bones are coming out."

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