One of the dead men, a 69-year-old considered a slave, had won a court ruling against the village imam over farmland. Some members of the community objected to the judge’s decision, surrounded the houses of the so-called slaves and savagely beat them. The four dead men ranged in age from 42 to 72; an elderly woman and a married couple, aged 30 and 44, were hospitalised.
The two UN human rights experts are Alioune Tine, the UN independent expert on the situation of human rights in Mali, and Tomoya Obokata, the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery,