West African leaders call on Mali junta to free president

BAMAKO, Mali: West African leaders escalated pressure on Mali’s ruling junta late Thursday, calling on them to allow President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s return to power as the mutinous soldiers who overthrew him insisted his midnight resignation had been his own decision. The junta behind Tuesday’s military takeover said the 75-year-old Keita was only being held at army barracks for his own protection, and denied he had been ousted in the first place. “There was no coup d’état because the constitutional order is still in force,” junta spokesman Ismaël Wagué told The Associated Press in an interview late Thursday. “The president of the republic resigned on his own after making an analysis of...