Mali coup leaders trained by U.S.For the second time in eight years, a U.S.-trained military officer has emerged as the leader of a coup in Mali, sparking new questions about the effectiveness of security training programs that Canada has repeatedly supported.Col. Assimi Goita, who participated in a U.S.-led traiing exercise last year and graduated from a separate U.S. training course in 2016, has declared himself chairman of the junta that arrested Mali's President and Prime Minister and seized control of the West African country this week. Photos on U.S. websites, now deleted without explanation, show a U.S. military trainer posing with Col. Goita during an exercise in West Africa last year and U.S. officials giving him a certificate from an educational course at a U.S.-German security centre in 2016. A study by two scholars, published in the Journal of Peace Research in 2017, found that U.S. military training programs were associated with a higher risk of coups and coup attempts. Over a 40-year period, two-thirds of successful coups were carried out by officers who had participated in U.S. training, it found.