News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

Besigye’s house broken into and vandalised

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 05:39 AM PDT

Police arrested a suspect accused of breaking into and vandalising the home of opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye in Rukungiri.

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Kampala - Police have arrested a suspect accused of breaking into and vandalising the home of opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye in Rukungiri in Western Uganda.

A 20-year-old man, reported to be mentally unstable, was taken into custody on Sunday night after the former presidential candidate’s housekeeper reported a the break in.

During the break in the house’s solar system, electrical power circuit and front door were damaged.

“According to Christians at Christ the King Church, where the suspect plays the keyboard in the church’s choir, Fr Mathias Kwehangana, the parish priest had on Martyrs Day last week announced the disappearance of the suspect, asking Christians to help him return so that he could be assisted,” reported the Daily Monitor.

However, some sceptics have alleged that there could be a more sinister side to the home invasion, claiming that political opponents of Besigye could have used the mentally unstable man to carry out an act of intimidation on their behalf.

Besigye is currently incarcerated in Luzira maximum security prison on the outskirts of Kampala, awaiting trial on charges of treason.

Meanwhile, further violence broke out once again in Kasese in western Uganda’s restive Rwenzori region over the weekend with a royal guard from the Rwenzururu shot dead as he resisted arrest while one of the policemen carrying out the arrest was stabbed in the neck.

Following February’s presidential elections, bloody clashes between the Baamba and Bakonjo tribes left more than 50 people dead, many homes burnt down and people forced to flee their land in the months that followed.

The clashes, while fractured along tribal lines, also involved land and political disputes with the Baamba supportive of Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, led by incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, and the Bakonjo swearing allegiance to the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party under Besigye.

During the confrontations Bakonjo Rwenzuru guards clashed repeatedly with Ugandan security forces.

The Bakonjo from the Rwenzori Kingdom have been accused of wanting to cede from Uganda and establish their own state, a charge they deny.

– African News Agency

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EgyptAir hijacker ‘opposed Egypt’s policies’

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 05:37 AM PDT

An Egyptian hijacker reportedly threatened to blow up the aircraft because he was against the Egyptian government, according to the flight crew.

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Nicosia, Cyprus - The lawyer for an Egyptian hijacker says the flight crew of the EgyptAir plane had testified that the man threatened to blow up the aircraft because he was against the Egyptian government.

Robertos Brahimis told a Cypriot court on Monday that both the pilot and the co-pilot had testified in documents supporting Egypt’s request to extradite Seif Eddin Mustafa from Cyprus that he said aboard the Airbus A320 last March that he hijacked the aircraft because he “opposed the Egyptian government’s policies.”

Brahimis said a Cyprus-Egypt treaty prohibits a suspect’s extradition on political grounds.

But prosecution witness Yioulika Hadjiprodromou said Egypt’s extradition request has nothing to do with his politics and repeated that Egypt has given assurances that Mustafa will receive a fair trial and have his rights protected.

AP

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‘Two shot dead’ in protest over vote body

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 05:37 AM PDT

At least two protesters were shot dead in a rally against Kenya's election body in the western city of Kisumu, an opposition official said.

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Nairobi - At least two protesters were shot dead in a rally against Kenya's election body in the western city of Kisumu on Monday, an opposition official said, as demonstrators also gathered on the streets of the capital.

Police had fired into the air to break up a crowd trying to march on the Kisumu office of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), one witness told Reuters.

Protesters, accusing the commission of pro-government bias and demanding its members resign before elections in August next year, blocked roads with burning tyres in both Kisumu and Nairobi's Kibera slum. “IEBC must go,” demonstrators shouted.

There was no immediate police comment on Monday's reported deaths.

Kenyan television reported at least one person killed.

Western Kenya, traditionally an opposition stronghold, has seen some of the worst violence in the almost weekly protests.

Three people were killed in clashes in the region on May 23.

Western ambassadors have accused the police of using excessive force and called for dialogue in a nation prone to political strife.

The 2007 election triggered weeks of ethnic bloodshed and the 2013 result was disputed.

Dialogue demanded

A meeting last week between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga failed to defuse tensions.

Police said on Friday that any march by protesters would contravene a court order and demonstrators could face arrest.

“We have confirmed two people shot dead,” Dennis Onyango, spokesman for opposition leader Raila Odinga, saying they had participated in the protest in Kisumu. He said the protests “have been cleared by the court”.

The opposition have demanded dialogue on reforming the IEBC.

“There is no word yet from State House on our demands,” Onyango said, referring to the president's residence and office.

Businesses have called for a swift resolution of the row, saying it was taking a toll on an economy which was hit hard by the post-2007 election violence amid the tensions in the build up to the 2013 vote.

“We must find solutions and the solution must be based on the rule of law. It calls for a lot mediation,” Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) Chairman Dennis Awori told Reuters, urging to the church, politicians and others to help bring calm.

IEBC commissioners deny any bias and say they will stay on, while the government has said any reform needs to follow constitutional channels, which could involve a petition to parliament where Kenyatta's Jubilee coalition has a majority.

Reuters

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About 200kg of cannabis seized in Burundi

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 05:36 AM PDT

Burundi police seized about 200kg of cannabis in Ngagara commune, north of the capital Bujumbura.

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Bujumbura - Burundi police at the weekend seized about 200kg of cannabis in Ngagara commune, north of the capital Bujumbura.

The cannabis which was hidden in three large sacs, is suspected to have come from the country’s western region of Gatumba.

“Police had information on the name of a driver of the vehicle transporting the drug called Habonimana Fidele. After being asked to stop, the driver refused and police launched a chase,” the Spokesman for the Security Ministry, Pierre Nkurikiye, said.

He said the driver who was driving at a high speed, hit a tree near a police camp.

Nkurikiye said the driver was seriously injured and he was first rushed to hospital for medical attention.

“After a search in the vehicle, police found the 200kg of cannabis. We are waiting for the driver to recover so that he can tell us the origin and destination of the cannabis,” Nkurikiye told the media.

Xinhua

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Trump: I made ‘a lot of money’ in Gaddafi deal

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 03:34 AM PDT

Donald Trump says he made “a lot of money” in a deal years ago with Muammar Gaddafi.

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Jersey City, New Jersey - Donald Trump says he made “a lot of money” in a deal years ago with Muammar Gaddafi, despite suggesting at the time he had no idea the former Libyan dictator was involved in renting his suburban New York estate.

“Don’t forget, I’m the only one. I made a lot of money with Gaddafi, if you remember,” Trump said in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday.

“He came to the country, and he had to make a deal with me because he needed a place to stay.”

“He paid me a fortune. Never got to stay there,” Trump said.

“And it became sort of a big joke.”

The presumptive Republican nominee was talking about a bizarre incident in 2009, when Gaddafi was in desperate search of a place to pitch his Bedouin-style tent during a visit to New York for a meeting of the UN General Assembly.

After trying and failing to secure space in Manhattan’s Central Park, on the Upper East Side and in Englewood, New Jersey, the Libyan government turned to Trump’s 213-acre Seven Springs estate in suburban Bedford, New York.

Gaddafi never stayed at the property, but it was nevertheless a spectacle.

Reporters flocked to the town to watch construction crews erect a white-topped tent that was lined with a tapestry of camels and palm trees and outfitted with leather couches and coffee tables.

At one point the tent was torn down after the Town of Bedford threatened to sue Trump personally - and was then re-erected, to the town’s chagrin.

At the time, Trump distanced himself from the matter, hinting that he’d been tricked into renting his land.

Representatives of Gaddafi - loathed in the US due to his ties to terrorism - had falsified the identity of their client in other instances to make renting property easier.

Before the tent was re-pitched, Trump said he had “no idea” that Gaddafi might be involved in the deal to rent a section of the estate, a town official said.

Bedford Town Supervisor Lee Roberts told The Associated Press at the time that Trump told her that, as far as he knew, his arrangement was with partners in the United Arab Emirates.

“We have business partners and associates all over the world. The property was leased on a short-term basis to Middle Eastern partners who may or may not have a relationship to Mr Gaddafi. We are looking into the matter now,” Trump Organisation spokeswoman Rhona Graff said in a statement at the time.

But Trump had changed his tune two years later, when he boasted of having “screwed” the Libyan leader on the deal.

“I dealt with Gaddafi. Excuse me. I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for the whole year or for two years. And then I didn’t let him use the land. That’s what we should be doing,” Trump said in a 2011 interview with Fox News.

He reiterated the claim on CNN that same year. Trump said he had leased Gaddafi “a piece of land for his tent. He paid me more than I get in a whole year. And then, eh, he wasn’t able to use the piece of land... So I got in one night more money than I would have gotten all year for this piece of land up in Westchester. And then didn’t let him use it? That’s called being intelligent,” Trump said.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks did not respond to questions Sunday about whether Trump was in fact aware at the time that he was dealing with Gaddafi and how much he made from the deal.

Bedford Town Attorney Joel Sachs, who dealt with Trump directly on the issue, said that Trump insisted to town officials that he didn’t know about the Gaddafi connection - and that officials suspected he was lying.

“We believe that Trump knew that he had leased his property to Gaddafi,” Sachs said. “He definitely denied that he knew, but we had gotten a lot of evidence.”

Roberts, the former Bedford town supervisor, said Sunday she didn’t remember much about the back-and-forth, but agreed it was a mess.

“It was a very emotional time. People got very upset at the thought of him coming here,” she said.

But there was also an element of the absurd.

“There was a goat involved. They were going to kill a goat and have it for dinner,” she said. When Gaddafi didn’t show, “it got a reprieve.”

Roberts said she was offered the goat as a souvenir of sorts, but had to turn it down.

“No, we can’t have a goat in my town house!” she recalled with a laugh.

AP

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Migrant bodies wash up on Libyan coast

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 02:44 AM PDT

The bodies of 133 migrants have washed up on the shore at the western Libyan city of Zuwarah, the Red Crescent said.

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Tripoli - The bodies of 133 migrants have washed up on the shore at the western Libyan city of Zuwarah in recent days, the Red Crescent said on Sunday.

Spokesman Al-Khamis al-Bosaifi said about three-quarters of the migrants were women and there were at least five children.

No documents were found with the bodies, which were partly decomposed, but they were mainly sub-Saharan Africans, he said.

A local security official said the migrants were thought to have set off from the nearby city of Sabratha, where a surge in boat departures led to hundreds of migrant deaths last week.

Migrants hoping to reach Italy from Libya pay hundreds of dollars to traffickers for a place in a boat.

The vessels are often flimsy and ill-equipped for the journey across the Mediterranean.

The crossing is far more dangerous than that between Turkey and Greece, which was the busiest sea route until a deal to curb flows between the European Union and Turkey came into force in March.

So far this year more than 40 000 migrants have arrived in Italy after crossing the central Mediterranean, many fleeing poverty, repression and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 2 000 have died trying to make the crossing.

Reuters

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Families want access to executed relatives

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 02:43 AM PDT

Families of at least 20 convicts executed under the death penalty by the Botswana government have requesting access to their graves.

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Gabarone - Families of at least 20 convicts executed under the death penalty by the Botswana government have written to President Lieutenant-General Seretse Khama Ian Khama requesting access to their graves.

The letter written on behalf of the families by the Botswana Institute for the Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Offenders (BIRRO) on May 31, is the first test case for the Botswana Prisons Act.

The Act prohibits all persons except the minister of Justice, Defence and Security and those authorised by him from accessing the graves.

The Act says the execution of the convicts is a high security process.

The Act prohibits visits until the convicts are executed and buried in special graves within the main prison complex in Gaborone.

This inadvertently keeps the family in the dark about the fate of death row inmates.

In the letter, copied to the Attorney-General and the Commissioner of Prisons, BIRRO appealed to President Khama to use his powers to allow the families to visit the graves of their executed relatives.

“As BIRRO, we will feel more blessed if His Excellency the President can use his powers to arrange for those who lost their loved ones through the death penalty to be allowed to see the graves of their sons, daughters, fathers, mothers among others,” read part of the BIRRO letter.

“We believe that this will be an important initiative as we look forward to Botswana’s golden jubilee (50th Independence Anniversary).

“It will be a greater move forward for both the government and the victims and it will also assure them that their beloved ones are indeed in their rightful place of rest. In this way they will give up and help in building and taking Botswana a step forward.”

BIRRO said accessing the graves would help the families to come to terms and make peace with the heartbreaks associated with the secretive execution and burial process of condemned prisoners.

The secretive administration of the execution, the burial and denial of access to the graves by family members has in the past been condemned as “inhuman and degrading” by the International Federation for Human Rights.

In Botswana, the families, lawyers and friends of death row prisoners are not officially informed of the dates of execution and burials.

They have to rely on public announcements which routinely come through print and electronic media outlets.

Even after the execution, the Prisons Act does not allow family members to visit the graves to pay their last respects.

– African News Agency

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Protesters demand Kenyan electoral body quit

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 02:40 AM PDT

Protesters in Kisumu blocked roads with burning tyres and stones to demand an electoral body quit, a witness said.

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Nairobi - Protesters in Kenya's western city of Kisumu blocked roads with burning tyres and stones on Monday to demand an electoral body that will oversee next year's elections quit, a witness said.

Police and demonstrators have repeatedly clashed during protests that have been organised on an almost weekly basis since late April by the opposition, which accuses the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of bias.

Kisumu and other towns in the western Kenya, traditionally an opposition stronghold, have seen some of the worst violence.

Three people were killed in clashes in the region on May 23.

Police have also clashed with protesters in Nairobi, where the opposition said it would also stage rallies on Monday.

“IEBC must go,” demonstrators in Kisumu shouted, while others carried a banner carrying the same slogan.

A meeting last week between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga failed to defuse tensions in a nation prone to political strife. Violence after the 2007 election killed about 1 200 people.

The opposition have demanded dialogue on reforming the IEBC.

IEBC commissioners deny any bias and say they will stay on, while the government has said any reform needs to follow constitutional channels, which could involve a petition to parliament where Kenyatta's Jubilee coalition has a majority.

Reuters

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Another Somali female journalist murdered

Posted: 06 Jun 2016 02:40 AM PDT

A second female journalist has been killed in Somalia in a period of less than six months.

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Kampala - A second female journalist has been killed in Somalia in a period of less than six months.

Unidentified gunmen shot Sagal Salad Osman, a producer for Radio Mogadishu, on Sunday Radio Mogadishu reported.

Osman was shot outside a university in the west of the capital, Mogadishu, and later died at a hospital in the city.

Condemning the attack Somali President Hassan Sheikh warned that those who harmed innocent people should be held accountable and would be brought to justice as had happened before.

Osman is the second female Somali journalist to be murdered in less than six months following the death of Hindia Haji Mohamed, who was blown up in a car bombing last December, an attack that Al Shabaab extremists claimed responsibility for.

Mohamed, who worked for Somalia’s state-run broadcaster, was the widow of a murdered journalist and was one of three journalists killed during the course of their duty in 2015.

Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries to work in for journalists with members of the media regularly targeted by extremists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says attacks on the press in the country have killed 59 journalists since 1992, with 18 killed in 2012 alone.

The surge in violence followed the outbreak of civil war in the Horn of Africa country in 1992.

However, Al Shabaab are not the only perpetrators of the attacks on the media with criminals, warlords and even government agents suspected of carrying out some of the killings.

Furthermore, an atmosphere of intimidation pervades as journalists try to report, with many receiving death threats while the police rarely investigate violence or threats against journalists.

– African News Agency

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