Maryland man who worked at embassy in Burkina Faso sentenced for rape of 2 girls

BALTIMORE (AP) — A Maryland man who was an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Burkina Faso has been sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting two girls while working in the African nation, federal prosecutors said.

Fode Sitafa Mara, 41, was convicted last year by a federal jury of four counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a minor, as well as one count each of attempted coercion and enticement of a minor and attempted obstruction of justice.

Mara was sentenced Thursday. His lawyer, Robert C. Bonsib, said Mara has asserted his innocence throughout the case and plans to appeal.

A U.S. citizen, Mara was an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Trial evidence showed that Mara forcibly raped two teenage girls in 2022 and 2023 at his embassy-leased residence in Ouagadougou.

The person who previously lived at the home had developed a relationship with the girls and their family, “providing them with nourishment and safety,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release. Prosecutors said the girls, ages 13 and 15, lived in poverty in a home without running water a short distance from Mara’s home.

“He used the girls’ mother’s life-threatening illness as an opportunity to demand sex, telling them he could not help them without receiving something in return,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Mara gave phones to the girls so he could summon them while his wife was away at work, prosecutors said.

The U.S. prosecuted the case because Mara’s home in Burkina Faso was reserved for use by diplomatic personnel. The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide effort launched in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.