A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, MAY 24 , 2022
him to the suit would not lead to
additional relief for consumers.
Racine’s office said this new
lawsuit is based on hundreds of
thousands of pages of documents
that his staff did not have access
to until litigation during the Cam-
bridge Analytica suit, including
depositions of Facebook employ-
ees and other whistleblowers.
The suit takes aim at Zucker-
berg’s “unparalleled level of con-
trol over the operations of Face-
book,” noting that Zuckerberg
controls almost 60 percent of the
company’s voting shares and is
personally involved in major
company decisions.
The lawsuit argues that the
Cambridge Analytica scandal was
the result of Zuckerberg’s vision
to open up the Facebook platform
to third-party developers. It also
alleges that he was aware of the
potential harms that might result
from sharing consumers’ data but
failed to act on them. In one email
discussing data leakage, Zucker-
berg wrote “there is clear risk on
the advertiser side,” according to
the lawsuit.
Facebook’s handling of the
Cambridge Analytica scandal has
opened up the company to global
regulatory scrutiny. In 2019, the
company reached a record-break-
ing $5 billion settlement with the
Federal Trade Commission. How-
ever, the FTC stopped short of
some of the tougher punishments
it initially had in mind, including
more direct liability for Zucker-
berg. Zuckerberg was never di-
rectly questioned about his
knowledge of the company’s mis-
steps in that investigation.Racine is targeting Zuckerberg
as his office seeks to take a tough-
er line against the tech industry.
In addition to his ongoing suit
against Facebook, Racine has
joined state attorneys general in
suing Google over misleading pri-
vacy practices. He also filed an
antitrust lawsuit against Ama-
zon, which was dismissed by the
D.C. Superior Court. Racine in
April filed a motion for the court
to reconsider that decision.
Racine’s efforts have run into
obstacles in court. Last year, he
attempted to add Zuckerberg as a
defendant in his ongoing Cam-
bridge Analytica lawsuit, but a
judge in March rejected the ef-
fort, saying Racine had waited too
long to add the embattled CEO to
the lawsuit and that appendingBY CAT ZAKRZEWSKID.C. Attorney General Karl A.
Racine (D) on Monday sued Mark
Zuckerberg, seeking to hold the
CEO of Facebook parent company
Meta liable for data abuses and
for misleading Facebook users
about their privacy protections.
The suit, filed in D.C. Superior
Court, alleges that Zuckerberg
directly participated in decisions
that enabled the Trump-allied po-
litical consultancy Cambridge
Analytica to siphon the personal
data of millions of users. Racine
sued the company over its data
practices in 2018 in a case that is
ongoing, but he is now seeking to
fine Zuckerberg personally over
his role in the events.
“This unprecedented security
breach exposed tens of millions of
Americans’ personal informa-
tion, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s pol-
icies enabled a multi-year effort
to mislead users about the extent
of Facebook’s wrongful conduct,”
Racine said in a news release.
“This lawsuit is not only warrant-
ed, but necessary, and sends a
message that corporate leaders,
including CEOs, will be held ac-
countable for their actions.”
Meta spokesman Andy Stone
did not immediately respond to a
request for comment on the law-
suit.D.C. attorney general sues Meta CEOJABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
D.C. Attorney General Karl A.
Racine (D) speaks during a
Dec. 14 news conference on
Capitol Hill.Lawsuit aims to hold
Zuckerberg liable for
data abuse scandalThere is no law. The jihadists
knew that. It is easy for them to
control.”
A Malian soldier scanned his
documents and told him to sit on
the ground outside his house. He
watched some of his neighbors
get tied up and dragged away.
Many remained outside, under
the hot sun, for four whole days.
The security forces went around
confiscating phones, the musi-
cian said, preventing people
from documenting the scene.
The musician heard gunshots
and screaming. Then he saw
smoke: The security forces were
burning the bodies.
One victim was his 46-year-
old brother, a herder.
“The bodies were unrecogniz-
able,” he said. “All we had was
ashes.”
The witnesses said no one
knows how many people were
killed, but they estimated close
to 600, double the Human Rights
Watch figure. Half were civilians,
they said.
The security forces told resi-
dents not to cooperate with ex-
tremists or they would return.
The Malian defense ministry lat-
er announced that soldiers had
killed 203 “terrorists.” Army
brass visited Moura on April 10
and declared the town had been
“released from the terrorists’
yokes.”
Yet Moura no longer exists, the
witnesses said. Once the atten-
tion dwindled, the extremists
accused residents of working
with the military and ordered
them to leave. “There is no one
left in Moura,” the musician said.
Satellite imagery taken at the
end of April and throughout May
appears to confirm his account:
There are no structures left by
Moura’s riverbed and the figures
in the town squares are gone.Paquette reported from Dakar,
Senegal. Lee reported from
Washington. Swaine reported from
New York.tion in late March, a Human
Rights Watch investigation
found.
“I’ve documented atrocities by
all sides in Mali for over a
decade, and while armed Isla-
mists have massacred hundreds
of people, this is the worst single
atrocity by any group,” said the
author, Corinne Dufka.
The Post interviewed three
men from Moura, the musician
and two cow sellers, who said
they witnessed the massacre. All
three fled the town and went into
hiding. Their accounts paint a
picture of a brutal operation that
left no room for due process.
The violence began when five
helicopters appeared on the
morning of March 27. One land-
ed in each corner of Moura, while
one equipped with artillery hov-
ered in the air.
Immediately, people began to
run — a mix of extremists and
civilians. The security forces shot
at everyone.
About a fifth of the comman-
dos were White, the witnesses
estimated. They all seemed to be
wearing the same uniform, and
one of the Malian soldiers acted
as an interpreter. The White men
were shouting to one another in
a foreign language.
“If I hear French, I know it is
French,” said the musician, who
speaks a local dialect but watch-
es television in French, Mali’s
official language. “I did not rec-
ognize the language.”
The security forces spread
throughout Moura, breaking
into houses and dragging men
out. They left the women and
children alone.
The musician said he tried to
remain calm and show the in-
truders his papers. He knew men
in the area who had been mistak-
en for extremists and killed over
the years.
“The jihadists live among us,”
the musician said. “We have no
choice. In this village, there is no
presence of the government.soldiers. Nowhere is safe.”
Malian soldiers and their Rus-
sian partners killed at least 456
civilians from January to mid-
April, ACLED estimates, mark-
ing a sharp year-over-year rise in
the number of deaths attributed
to security forces.
“The Russians are making
Mali less safe,” said a Malian
conflict researcher based in the
heart of the insurgency, who
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity because the government
has arrested critics. “They can
loot and massacre the popula-
tion without consequences.”
The United Nations team
charged with investigating hu-
man rights abuses in Mali has
tried since February to reach
areas where reports of extrajudi-
cial killings have surfaced but
has been blocked repeatedly by
the government. Security forces
briefly detained U.N. investiga-
tors trying to interview witness-
es from Moura in late April. The
witnesses were jailed, according
to two people with knowledge of
the incident, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
they fear government retaliation.
The largest massacre was in
Moura, where 300 people were
killed during a four-day opera-apart. You are not a jihadist but
you look like a jihadist.”
Insecurity has fueled waves of
civil unrest in Mali, making room
for army officers to overthrow
two presidents in the past two
years. The new military leaders
pledged to bring in help to end
the bloodshed.
Satellite imagery shows that
construction of the new military
base near Mali’s main airport
began in August, a month before
news broke that leaders were
negotiating a deal with Wagner.
Mercenaries sleep in the bar-
racks and run a logistical hub,
according to the Western offi-
cials, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to discuss sensitive
matters.
At least six Russian military
aircraft have touched down this
year in Bamako. Three were
unannounced by the Malian mil-
itary, according to flight data
provided by Flightradar24 and
cellphone video posted to Tele-
gram. On the way to Mali, some
appeared to make stops in Syria
and Libya, countries where Wag-
ner is known to operate.
Surveillance photos and drone
video captured last month by the
French Armed Forces and shared
with The Post show what mili-
tary officials described as Rus-
sian mercenaries at a Malian
base formerly occupied by
French troops. The patch of a
white skull, a symbol embraced
by Wagner, is visible on a vest.An unprecedented massacre
Mali’s relationship with Mos-
cow has proved popular in Ba-
mako, thanks in part to a sophis-
ticated disinformation campaign
linked to the Kremlin. Rallies
regularly feature Russian flags
and signs celebrating Wagner.
Beyond the capital, though,
enthusiasm fades to fear.
“I am terrified of the extrem-
ists,” one cow seller from Moura
told The Post. “I am terrified of
the Malian army and these Whitehave nothing to do with the
activities of private military com-
panies abroad.”
The Malian government and
army did not respond to messag-
es and calls seeking comment.‘Nowhere is safe’
Ever since Russia seized
Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in
2014, poisoning relations with
the West, it has pushed to build
alliances elsewhere. Putin paid
special attention to African na-
tions, where movements to slash
ties with former colonizers like
France were gaining steam —
particularly in Mali, a nation of
21 million. Despite a nine-year
international military interven-
tion led by Paris, extremists now
dominate two-thirds of the terri-
tory.
After French President Em-
manuel Macron announced last
year that Paris planned to with-
draw thousands of troops, Bama-
ko turned to Moscow. Relations
with France collapsed. Malian
officials kicked out the French
ambassador and told all French
troops to leave “without delay.”
Not long after that, the White
strangers in military fatigues
showed up, said the man who
described the bodies falling.
The Post is withholding the
names of witnesses because they
fear retaliation by the Malian
government.
The man is a musician from
the town of Moura, once a sleepy
community of farmers and herd-
ers. The peace was shattered
when al-Qaeda militants invad-
ed the country in 2012. They
settled in Moura seven years ago,
giving residents an ultimatum:
Support us, leave with nothing,
or die. Many in the town of
roughly 10,000 chose to stay and
adhere to uncomfortable new
rules.
“The jihadists made everyone
dress like them and grow beards
like them,” the musician said.
“For men, it’s hard to tell usover its war in Ukraine.
In Libya, U.S. defense officials
said Wagner agents planted ex-
plosives in children’s toys. In the
Central African Republic, human
rights investigators received re-
ports that mercenaries sexually
assaulted young women and
girls.
In Mali, where insurgents
have overrun vast stretches of
the country, witnesses told The
Washington Post that men they
believe to be Russian operatives
have killed scores of innocent
people in recent months under
the guise of restoring peace.
“There are quite a lot of eye-
witness accounts on the presence
of White soldiers speaking an
unknown language,” said Héni
Nsaibia, senior researcher at the
Armed Conflict Location and
Event Data Project (ACLED),
which documents violent events
around the world. Mounting vis-
ual evidence, he added, “strongly
suggests they are private Russian
military contractors and not con-
ventional Russian forces.”
Between 800 and 1,000 Rus-
sian mercenaries are now active
in Mali, according to U.S. mili-
tary officials focused on Africa,
providing services that cost
Mali’s military government up to
$10 million monthly. They guard
the presidential palace, officials
say, and are tasked with tracking
extremists in the scrubland.
The number of Malians fleeing
to neighboring Mauritania has
surged in the months since Wag-
ner landed. Registrations at a
refugee camp near the border
have more than quadrupled
since February, according to the
U.N. refugee agency. And groups
that track civilian deaths at the
hands of security forces say fatal-
ities have skyrocketed.
Wagner operates in secrecy,
masking its activities with an
evolving network of shell compa-
nies that often avoid formal
paperwork. But documents and
imagery reviewed by The Post,
some of them previously unre-
ported, point to a heightened
Russian presence in Mali.
Satellite photographs illus-
trate the buildup of a military
base outside the airport in the
capital, Bamako, which Western
officials say is used by Wagner
operatives. Flight records reveal
Russian Air Force jets making
unpublicized trips to and from
that city. Drone videos and sur-
veillance photos captured by
French authorities and reviewed
by The Post show White men in
uniform alongside Malian forces.
The Malian government has
denied hiring Wagner, saying it
works only with Russian military
instructors. But Russian officials
have publicly contradicted that
claim, calling the operatives “pri-
vate” contractors. The line is
blurry, experts say, as many Wag-
ner agents are Russian military
veterans.
The Kremlin did not respond
to a request for comment. When
asked by The Post in March
about Wagner’s expanding foot-
print in Mali, Kremlin spokes-
man Dmitry Peskov said, “We
MALI FROM A
Civilian killings soar as Russian mercenaries fight in Mali
FRENCH ARMED FORCES
An image claiming to show armed Wagner mercenaries at a former French military base in Gossi, Mali, in April. The white skull emblem embraced by the group is at right.Between 800 and 1,Russian mercenariesare now active in Mali,according to U.S.military officials focusedon Africa, providingservices that cost Mali’smilitary government upto $10 million monthly.Home heating to increase up to 54%!INSULATION SALE202-996-3586 DC301-245-2492 MD703-278-9016 VAVA #2705029456A | MHIC #
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