adminA family member said “several armed men including two or three wearing masks” raided Sidibe’s home, arresting him for the third time since the 22 March coup.
Former defence minister Sadio Gassama and Hamidou Sissoko, a top aide to ousted president Amadou Toumani Toure, were among others arrested in overnight raids and whisked to Kati, the junta’s headquarters near the capital Bamako.
Soumaila Cisse, a former cabinet minister, was picked up later after soldiers failed to find him at home. Family members told AFP he was taken to Kati in an ambulance, prompting fears that he was hurt.
A Malian security source said the arrests would be explained “when the time comes.”
Observers said the raids appeared to be aimed at showing that the junta, which ceded power to an interim president, Dioncounda Traore, last week, does not intend to be sidelined by politicians.
Nine prominent figures were freed last week after being arrested during the putsch. Five were members of Toure’s government, including his foreign minister, Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga.
None of those arrested overnight on Monday was on the short list for the job of transitional prime minister, although Cisse, the former director of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, was a leading candidate in a presidential election originally set for 29 April.
The interim prime minister’s top priority will be to negotiate with Tuareg and Islamist rebels who took advantage of the coup to overrun much of the north of the country.
The low-ranking army officers who staged the putsch justified their action by denouncing the government’s ineffective resistance to the Tuareg rebellion, which was rekindled in January.
The coup prompted the rebels, joined by Islamists, to capture an area roughly the size of France, including the ancient town of Timbuktu.
The main Tuareg rebel group Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) then declared an independent state, drawing international condemnation.
A member of MNLA’s political branch said on Monday that a first official meeting between the rebels and Malian authorities had gone well and mooted the possibility of a federation.
Possible interim premiers, according to sources close to the negotiations, include Soumana Sacko, who served this function in 1991-92 and Michel Sidibe, UN under secretary-general and director of the UN AIDS programme and Dialla Konate, an academic working in the United States.
The make-up of the government was to be decided later this week.
But the length of the transition period is a key stumbling block. Under the constitution, an interim presidency should last only 40 days, but a transition deal reached with regional mediators recognised that it could take longer to organise new elections and return Mali to constitutional rule. — AFP
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