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• Mugabe under house arrest as military takes control

  Nov 15, 2017 by Admin / 765 Views

  

  Zimbabwe's military was in control of the country on Wednesday as President Robert Mugabe said he was under house arrest and his generals denied staging a coup.

  Mugabe's decades-long grip on power appeared to be slipping as armoured military vehicles blockaded parliament, soldiers took up positions at strategic points across Harare and senior soldiers commandeered state television to broadcast a late-night address.

  "The president... and his family are safe and sound and their security is guaranteed," Major General Sibusiso Moyo said late Tuesday.

  "We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes... As soon as we have accomplished our mission we expect that the situation will return to normalcy."

  AFP/File / Jekesai NJIKIZANAThe ruling ZANU-PF party accused army chief General Constantino Chiwenga of "treasonable conduct" after he criticised President Robert Mugabe for sacking vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa. 
  

  Moyo added: "This is not a military takeover of government".

  Their shock announcement was later followed by heavy gunfire close to the 93-year-old president's private residence, and prompted angry responses from around the world.

  Mugabe later told South African President Jacob Zuma that he was effectively under house arrest -- though unharmed. Several supporters of Mugabe and his wife Grace are reportedly in military custody.

  Pretoria said it would deploy a military and intelligence delegation to Harare to help broker a resolution to the crisis on behalf of southern Africa's regional bloc.

  The Southern African Development Community said it would hold an emergency meeting in Botswana on Thursday to discuss the situation.

  South Africa, the European Union, the United Nations and Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial master, all called for restraint.

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• Togo's Gnassingbe and Guinea's Conde start Liberia mediation effort

  Nov 2, 2017 by Admin / 764 Views

  

  Embattled president of Togo Faure Gnassingbe and his Guinean counterpart Alpha Conde have entered Liberia’s political standoff ‘acting in a mediatory role,’ the AFP news agency has reported.

  Conde is in the team in his capacity as Chairman of the African Union (A.U.) whiles Faure is participating as leader of the regional political bloc of heads of state, ECOWAS.

  The Togolese leader confirmed via his official Twitter handle that the team had met with Liberian leader Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in order to discuss ways to complete the presidential polls in peace and in the interest of all parties. Reports indicate that they have also held talks with key members.

  

  The Liberian situation is currently at a stage where chances of the November 7 presidential run-off taking place is increasingly becoming slim. The country’s top court has halted the polls until it considers a challenge to first round results by a losing candidate who has alleged fraud.

  Third-place finisher Charles Brumskine’s Liberty Party contested the results of last month’s vote, which set up the run-off between former soccer star George Weah and Vice President Joseph Boakai.

  The election is meant to usher in Liberia’s first democratic transition since 1944, after periods of military rule and civil war that ended in 2003.

  Faure who took over the ECOWAS Chairperson post from outgoing Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has political issues back home where an opposition coalition is pushing for him to step down immediately.

   

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• Two Christian Aid Workers Executed In Nigeria

  Jan 28, 2020 by Admin / 742 Views

  

  JOS, Nigeria (BP) -- Islamic extremist group Boko Haram reportedly released a video last week showing the execution of two Christian aid workers in Nigeria.
  
  Lawrence Duna Dacighir and Godfrey Ali Shikagham, both members of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) in Plateau state, are shown kneeling while three masked, armed men stand behind them in a video posted Sept. 22 on Boko Haram's Amaq news agency site. The two young men, who had gone to Maiduguri to help build shelters for people displaced by Islamic extremist violence, are then shot from behind.
  
  Speaking in the Hausa language, one of the three terrorists says in the video that they have vowed to kill every Christian they capture in revenge for Muslims killed in past religious conflicts in Nigeria.
  Dacighir and Shikagham, originally from Plateau state's Mangu County, were captured by Boko Haram, now called the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), as they carried out their work in displaced persons camps.
  
  Ethnic and religious tensions resulted in large-scale clashes between Muslims and Christians in Jos in 2001 and 2008.
  
  It is not clear from the video, temporarily posted on YouTube, when the two men were executed. Their identities were confirmed by a relative, John Pofi, a COCIN pastor.
  Pastor Pofi, a cousin of the two executed Christians, told Morning Star News in a text message statement also shared with others that the two Plateau state natives had gone to Maiduguri from Abuja.
  
  "Lawrence and Godfrey left Abuja for Maiduguri in search of opportunities to utilize their skills for the betterment of humanity and paid with their lives," Pofi said. "We will never get their corpses to bury. The community will have to make do with a makeshift memorial to these young lives cut short so horrifically."
  
  Pastor Pofi noted, "We must ask ourselves if this is the kind of country we want where young men who are earning an honest living are brutally killed while those who abduct and kill others are invited to dialogue with government and paid handsomely," he said.
  
  In a letter last week to the United Nations secretary general, attorney Emmanuel Ogebe of the U.S.- Nigeria Law Group, a legal consulting firm with an emphasis on human rights, expressed concern that the Nigerian government did not condemn the killing of the two men even though they were helping to provide shelter for displaced

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• President Barrow receives rousing welcome

  Jan 27, 2017 by Admin / 738 Views

  

  ens of thousands of Gambians of all ages yesterday lined the streets from Westfield to inside the Banjul International Airport in Yundum to welcome home President Adama Barrow. 

  The president arrived in a white aircraft with the Ecowas logo at about 5pm, and was received at the foot of the aircraft by the only appointed member of his new cabinet, Fatoumata Jallow Tambajang, diplomats and other senior government officials. 

  The president took off from Dakar, Senegal, where he was sworn in as the third president of The Gambia on 19 January 2017.

  Upon arrival at the airport, Mr Barrow said: “I am a happy man today.  I think the bad part is finished now.” He promised to put in place his cabinet and set to work in earnest.

  Muhammed Ibn Chambas, UN Special Representative West Africa and Sahel, said the arrival of President Barrow was historic.

  “What we are witnessing here today is truly historic. Gambians have turned out in large numbers to welcome their president, and to ensure the take off of the government of President Barrow.” Mr Chambas said the United Nations working with Ecowas and other partners will continue to support the process to establish the necessary security for the new president, the vice president and the government and to allow a smooth transition from the past administration to this new one.

  President Barrow led a coalition of eight opposition parties that defeated the former incumbent president, Yahya Jammeh, in the 1st December election.

  Jammeh rejected the result after initially accepting it, causing a political impasse in the country that lasted for about one and half month, and nearly plunged the country into war.

  At the height of the political impasse, Barrow left for Mali, courtesy of Ecowas, then to Senegal where he was sworn into office at the Gambian Embassy in Dakar.

  Thanks to the success of last-ditch mediation efforts, led by the presidents of Guinea and Mauritania, Jammeh eventually left power and went into exile with his family in Equatorial Guinea.

  When Jammeh left, Gambians took to the streets to celebrate with music blaring from speakers and people dancing in the streets.

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• Trump calls for death penalty for NY attacker

  Nov 2, 2017 by Admin / 736 Views

  

  President Donald Trump called Thursday for the man charged over the New York truck attack to be executed, as a picture emerged of an Islamic State group sympathizer radicalized after struggling with life in America.

  Trump had said he was considering sending Sayfullo Saipov, 29, to the military's notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center, but backed off the idea in a blast of early morning tweets calling for the death penalty.

  "Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system," Trump tweeted.

  "There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!"

  Saipov appeared in a New York courtroom Wednesday on terrorism charges one day after he allegedly drove a rented pickup truck down a mile-long stretch of bike path in Manhattan, where children and their parents were preparing to celebrate Halloween.

  Eight people were killed, five of them friends from Argentina celebrating 30 years since their high school graduation.

  Twelve other people were wounded in the worst attack in New York since the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda hijackings. It ended when police shot Saipov in the abdomen.

  AFP / Jewel SAMADThe Home Depot pickup truck used in the attack
  

  Federal prosecutors have announced two charges so far: provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and violence and destruction of motor vehicles.

  The maximum punishment is life imprisonment, but attorneys could potentially seek the death penalty. A capital punishment case would be extremely rare in New York.

  The charging document said Saipov, an Uber driver and father-of-three who emigrated in 2010, confessed to acting in the name of IS and "felt good about what he had done," even demanding to hang an IS flag in his hospital room.

  He first planned an attack in the United States a year ago, before settling two months ago on a vehicle strike, choosing Halloween deliberately in a bid to kill as many people as possible, the complaint alleged.

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