Category: Judicial

A South Sudanese police officer was on Monday shot dead at his Western Equatoria state residence, causing panic among the public.

Brigadier General Abraham Chol, the Maridi county police director was killed alongside his brother John Mabior at around 9:00pm local time.

The motive behind the killing of the two remains unclear.

Speaking to Sudan Tribune on Wednesday, the acting Executive Director of the county, John Hezekiah Paul said the situation is now calm as investigations continue.

“Calm has returned to the area. The situation was tense on Tuesday. There was panic and fear. People were confused and looked worried because this was the incident involving a senior officer. It was a big surprise and so there was no movement in town. All shops were closed but finally we managed to control the situation. We talked to the family of the victims and everyone. This allowed the body to be taken to the church for prayers and restored calm”, he explained.

Paul said security personnel were alerted immediately after gunshots were heard.

“I was told after contacting the director of the security in the county that the inspector of police and his brother have been shot dead at their home. I felt bad and told others”, he noted.

Authorities say security forces have put in place measures to arrest the perpetrators and transport the body of the late police officer to Lakes state for burial.

Source: Sudan Tribune

Mali’s interim government appears ready to cast aside long-standing counterterrorism partnerships with the United States and France, saying that both countries have failed to make Mali any safer.

But at the same time, Mali’s prime minister says reports of a deal to bring in mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group are just “rumors and allegations.”

“The security situation keeps deteriorating by the day,” Choguel Maiga told VOA in an interview on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly late Sunday.

“Despite the fact that Mali has a lot of partners on the ground, we have to find new partners who can help improve the security situation,” Maiga added. “We can seek partnership either with Russia or with any other country.”

Reports of a deal between Mali’s interim government and Russia’s Wagner Group first emerged earlier this month, with Reuters reporting that Mali would pay $10.8 million a month to bring in about 1,000 mercenaries to train Mali’s military and provide security for senior officials.

‘A real concern’

U.S. and French officials have expressed their growing concern that the introduction of Russian mercenaries will do more damage than good.

“We don’t think looking to outside forces to provide security is the way forward,” a senior administration official said Friday in response to a question from VOA about the potential deal with Moscow. “That is not how to best start down the road to true stability.”

French officials have also expressed growing alarm, both in public and private, about the possible deal with the Russian firm.

“We want the return of the Malian state, not the arrival of Russian mercenaries,” French Defense Minister Florence Parly tweeted last week. “We are for the sovereignty of Mali, not for its weakening.”

Another official with knowledge of the matter called the potential deployment of Wagner mercenaries “a real concern.”

“Such a perspective is not a viable and reasonable solution for Mali and the Sahel,” the official told VOA on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation, adding that Malian officials need only to look at developments in the Central African Republic to see the dangers.

“The situation we are currently observing in Central Africa, a country in which more than 2,000 Wagner mercenaries are present, reinforces our view that such a force is pursuing a predatory agenda,” the official said. “Wagner is exploiting mining areas and controlling Central Africa customs and, above all, is guilty of serious abuses against the civilian population abuses highlighted by the U.N. in several reports.”

Russia has denied any abuses by contractors there.

Mali’s prime minister, while denying that a deal with Wagner had been finalized, dismissed the idea that the U.S., France and other countries had any right to criticize the interim government.

“All those countries of the international community which are opposing any partnership between Mali and the Wagner Group, all those countries are present there for the past eight years,” Maiga told VOA.

“I can only say that the government of Mali is assessing the situation, is seeking better ways,” he said. “The day we reach any agreement we will say it, and everybody will know. Whether it is with the Russian state, whether it is with another entity, people will find out.”

Moscow open to deal

In contrast to denials from Malian officials, however, Russian officials have welcomed talk of the potential deal with Wagner.

“They are combating terrorism,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a news conference at the U.N. on Saturday. “And they have turned to a private military company from Russia in connection with the fact that, as I understand, France wants to significantly draw down its military component.”

“We don’t have anything to do with that,” Lavrov said, adding, “at the government level, we are also contributing to providing for military and defense capacities of Mali.”

Many Western governments, though, insist that there is little practical difference between the Kremlin and the exploits of the Wagner Group, run by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Prigozhin, sometimes called “Putin’s cook” because of his catering company’s work for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is thought to have extensive ties to Russia’s political and military establishments, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The U.S. State Department sanctioned Prigozhin and Wagner back in July 2020, as well as several front companies for the group’s operations in Sudan.

Source: Voice Of America

BEIRUT — The lead judge investigating last year’s massive blast in Beirut’s port suspended his work in the case Monday after a former Cabinet minister demanded his dismissal.

Judge Tarek Bitar, the second judge to lead the complicated and thorny investigation, canceled the questioning of a former military intelligence general, scheduled for Monday. The Court of Appeals now has to decide whether to dismiss him from the case.

Bitar’s removal, if it happens, would likely be the final blow to the inquiry, making it highly unlikely that a third judge would take up the job amid threats by members of the country’s political elite who have closed ranks in their effort to block the investigation.

The development comes amid a growing campaign by Lebanon’s political class against Bitar, who took over the job in February after his predecessor, Fadi Sawwan, was removed following similar legal challenges by senior officials he had accused of negligence that led to the blast.

On August 4, 2020, hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive material used in fertilizers that had been improperly stored in the port for years, exploded, killing at least 214 people, injuring more than 6,000 and devastating nearby neighborhoods.

Families of the victims of the explosion have already demanded an international probe, not trusting the Lebanese investigation. Lebanon is known for a culture of impunity that has prevailed for decades, including among the entrenched political elites.

The attempt to remove Bitar angered families of the victims who have been hoping that the judge would reveal who was responsible for bringing the material to the port and storing it in a port warehouse for years, as well as what caused the explosion described as one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

“He was the best hope for Lebanese justice, but they are torpedoing everything,” said Mireille Bazergy Khoury, whose son Elias, 15, was killed by the explosion. She said the repeated lawsuits and challenges to the judge prove that those officials are implicated in the explosion.

“I can’t find the words to capture how sad and frustrated I am. I feel like every time something like this happens, they kill me once again,” Khoury said.

She said the families will try to legally challenge the obstruction attempts. “They killed my son, my daughter was injured, my home was destroyed, my life is in ruins.”

Bitar in July announced his intention to go after senior Lebanese officials and summoned for questioning then-outgoing Prime Minister Hassan Diab, three former Cabinet ministers and top security officials.

None showed up for questioning; the parliament failed to lift immunity of those summoned — a necessary step before any prosecution. Diab’s office and then-interior minister, Mohamed Fehmi, declined to let Bitar question the heads of two security agencies.

On Friday, former Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk, who was also implicated in the probe, filed a motion to dismiss the judge.

Source: Voice of America

Women’s rights activists, opposition groups and the United Nations are pressuring Zimbabwean authorities to arrest a man who had married a 14-year-old who died last week while giving birth at a church shrine. Zimbabwean police say they are investigating the matter.

Hashtags #EndChildMarriagesNow and #justiceforMemory have been trending on social media after 14-year-old Memory Machaya died while giving birth at an apostolic sect shrine about 400 kilometers east of Harare. The United Nations in Zimbabwe issued a statement saying child marriages continue to surface in Zimbabwe, where one out of three girls is married before the age of 18. Sirak Gebrehiwot, the U.N. spokesman in Zimbabwe said that is not acceptable.

“The United Nations in Zimbabwe notes with deep concern and condemns strongly the surrounding circumstances leading to the untimely death of 14-year-old Memory Machaya from Marange, who died while giving birth at an apostolic sect shrine,” he said.

One of the key instruments to ending child marriages in Zimbabwe, the U.N. believes, is to fast-track the adoption of the Marriage Bill that recognizes child marriage as crime and, of course, rolling out national action plan on ending child marriages will go a long way.”

Responding to the social media protests, Zimbabwean police issued a statement saying they are “conducting investigations” into Machaya’s death.

Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda heads Rozaria Memorial Trust, which fights child marriage in rural areas. She was appointed goodwill ambassador on ending child marriage on the continent by the African Union Commission.

“I am outraged by the rape, marriage and death of Memory Machaya,” she said. “I am also grateful to see a huge outpouring of Zimbabweans and people in the region who are calling for an end to child rape and to child marriage. I ask the government of Zimbabwe to step up the investigations and arrest the perpetrator. I also call on the government to investigate and document how we can end these sexual abuses that are happening within religious institutions. It is important for us to fight justice and ensure impunity.”

Opposition leader Linda Tsungirirai Masarira is one of thousands of Zimbabweans who have signed a petition to push police not to ignore the death of Machaya.

“I demand justice as a woman and as a mother to whatever happened to Memory. But for me, when I look at the issue, it is just a tip of the iceberg. I have set up an appointment with minister of home affairs [Kazembe Kazembe]. And I am going to talk to him about the underlying issues of the Marange apostolic sect. For me, religion does not mean violating country’s laws,” she said.

Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Source: Voice of America

A South African court Monday began hearing an appeal launched by former President Jacob Zuma on his lengthy prison sentence in the wake of violent protests against his imprisonment.

According to Reuters, Zuma’s lawyers asked the court to release the 79-year-old Zuma partly on the grounds that the Constitutional Court improperly imposed the sentence in his absence.

Zuma reported to a prison facility in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal last week to begin serving a 15-month sentence on contempt of court charges after he failed to testify before a special inquiry looking into wide-ranging allegations of official corruption during his nine years in office, which ended in 2018.

His lawyers are also arguing that he will be at risk of catching COVID-19 while imprisoned.

Zuma has denied the allegation and refused to participate in the inquiry that began during his final weeks in office.

Protests spread from KwaZulu-Natal into the country’s main economic hub of Johannesburg Sunday, with several shops looted and a section of the major M2 highway closed as some protests turned violent. Reuters says television footage showed a mall ablaze in Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal.

Police say 62 people have been arrested in connection with riots since Zuma was imprisoned.

The body of a 40-year-old man has been recovered from one of the shops that was set on fire over the weekend, according to police.

President Cyril Ramaphosa called for calm Sunday, urging protesters to demonstrate peacefully.

“People have been intimidated and threatened, and some have even been hurt,” Ramaphosa said.

Zuma, a prominent anti-apartheid fighter, remains popular despite the allegations of corruption.

Source: Voice of America