Mali's Assimi Goïta pardons French DGSE officer Yann Vezilier, sentenced to 20 years for conspiracy

Pardon and immediate expulsion

Mali's transitional president, General Assimi Goïta, granted a presidential pardon on Thursday 13 August 2026 to Yann Vezilier, a French national sentenced in June to 20 years in prison for conspiracy against Malian institutions. The government announced the decision in a communiqué published on Facebook, relayed by Agence France-Presse. The pardon is accompanied by the immediate removal of Vezilier from Malian territory.

The statement emphasised that the act of clemency does not call into question the facts established by the conviction.

This act of clemency, which does not call into question the facts established by a contradictory judgment rendered during a trial where all the rights of the defence were respected, is accompanied by the immediate removal of the individual from the national territory.

Arrest and detention

Vezilier, identified as an officer of France's external intelligence service (DGSE), was arrested on 13 August 2025 alongside several officers of the Malian Armed Forces during an operation by State Security (SE), Mali's intelligence service. He was officially posted as second secretary at the French embassy in Bamako, a status that in principle conferred diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention. He spent nearly ten months in detention between his arrest and his trial, and was held until recently at camp 1 of the gendarmerie in Bamako.

Mali accused Vezilier of acting on behalf of French intelligence services to destabilise the government of Assimi Goïta, alongside several generals and dozens of soldiers. At the time of the arrests, Malian security minister General Daoud Aly Mohammedine said that marginal elements of the armed forces had sought to destabilise the institutions of the Republic with the help of foreign states.

France's response

The French foreign ministry rejected the accusations. Paris maintained that Vezilier was carrying out a security cooperation mission and that France had not participated, directly or indirectly, in any destabilisation of Mali. After the arrest, France suspended its anti-terrorist cooperation with Mali and ordered two Malian diplomats to leave French territory. The French foreign ministry had not commented on the pardon as of Thursday.

Third-party mediation

The Malian government's communiqué thanked an unnamed fraternal country for its good offices contributing to the pardon. According to a Malian military source cited by Le Monde, Morocco played a role in the negotiations leading to Vezilier's release. The identity of the mediating country was not officially confirmed.

Malian co-defendants remain untried

The Malian officers arrested with Vezilier have been expelled from the army but have not yet been tried. They are accused of having set up an espionage and plot network aimed at destabilising the institutions of the Malian transition in order to carry out a coup d'état.

Broader rift and security crisis

The pardon comes after years of severe tensions between Paris and Bamako. Since the coups of 2020 and 2021, the junta has distanced itself from France, the former colonial power, and turned to Russia for political and military support. Mali cut military ties with France, which withdrew its troops from the region.

The security situation has worsened. Since late April, an offensive by the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), affiliated with al-Qaeda, and Tuareg independence fighters of the Front de Libération de l'Azawad has intensified fighting in the north. In April, the defence minister was killed in a suicide truck bombing against his residence near Bamako during a wave of attacks. Shortly after, Goïta proclaimed himself defence minister.