Trials begin for Ben Ali's inner circle - Africa

 

Twenty-three allies of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the toppled Tunisian leader, have appeared before a court in the capital Tunis for trying to flee the country last January with illegally obtained foreign currency.

Among those in court on Tuesday were Ali Seriati, Ben Ali's former security chief, and Imed Trabelsi, the newphew of the deposed leader's wife, Leila Trabelsi.

Imed Trabelsi was one of the most reviled men from the former ruling clan while Seriati headed Ben Ali's feared presidential guard which supervised all other security agencies.

In all, 35 people are facing charges but only 23 associates of Ben Ali arrested in January appeared before the court on Tuesday.

Fourteen handcuffed men and nine women, wearing white full-length robes, entered the tiny courtroom that was packed with journalists and lawyers.

The 23 were arrested and found to be in possession of a large sum in foreign currency as they tried to flee the country on January 14, the day Ben Ali and his wife fled into exile in Saudi Arabia after a popular revolt.

 Seriati, who is suspected of having planned a series of attacks aimed at fanning nation-wide chaos, told the court that fake passports were made at the presidential palace specifically for Ben Ali's immediate family.

The 23 defendants have all been held at the Aouina military base in Tunis since their arrest.

"You tried to flee the country on January 14 in possession of foreign currency and jewels," court president Faouzi Jbelli said, before reading out the charges against each of the accused.

Imed Trabelsi, wearing a white polo shirt, rejected the charges, denied that he had sought to flee the country and said the money in his possession came from "legal activities".

Jewels, drugs and cash

The prosecution said Imed, who was already sentenced to four years in jail in June for drug possession, had 36 watches and five kilograms of jewelery when he was nabbed at the airport. Another co-defendant, Moncef Trabelsi, was caught with $2,400 and 17,500 euros.

A defence lawyer said the trial might be postponed after the reading of the charges.

Since his escape to Saudi Arabia, Ben Ali has already been twice convicted and sentenced in trials held in his absence.

On July 4, a Tunis court sentenced him to 15 and a half years in jail for possession of arms, drugs and archaeological items - and fined him $78,112.

And in June, Ben Ali and his wife were sentenced to 35 years in prison and fined $65m for misappropriating public funds after police found large sums of cash and jewelery in their palace.

Ben Ali denounced his first conviction as a "parody of justice" and "political liquidation" in a statement issued last month.

But he and his entourage face possible legal proceedings in about 180 other cases.

Protests in Swaziland over shortage of drugs - Africa

 

 

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in Swaziland protesting against poor governance which has led to a shortage of essential medical supplies in sub-Saharan Africa's sole absolute monarchy.

More than 500 people demonstrated in Mbabane, the capital, on Wednesday while nearly 1,000 protested in the western town of Siteki.

AIDS groups have warned of an imminent shortage of anti-retroviral drugs in a country where a quarter of the people between the ages of 15 and 49 are believed to carry HIV.

The protests followed failure of labour union negotiations this week.

Click for more coverage on protests in sub-Saharan Africa

Wandile Sifundza, a teachers' union leader, said members want a change to a constitutional monarch in the southern African country, who can be trusted to manage national finances.

Protests were peaceful but heavily guarded. Several students were detained.

Human rights activists criticise the lavish lifestyle of the wealthy king Mswati III.

Mswati, who has 13 wives and a fortune estimated at $100m in a country where 70 per cent of people live on less than a dollar a day, has refused to loosen the monarchy's grip on power.

Last April police fired water cannons at pro-democracy protesters and detained people on the streets to prevent demonstrations.

More than 1,000 protesters chanting in a teacher's training centre were dispersed by police using water cannons.

 

Scores killed in Moroccan plane crash - Africa

A military transport plane slammed into a mountainside in bad weather in southern Morocco on Tuesday, killing all 80 people on board, hospital and military sources said.

King Mohammed VI announced three days of national mourning following the crash, one of the deadliest in the country's history.

The army said 78 people were killed on the spot after the Hercules C-130 crashed on the edge of the Sahara desert in Morocco's worst military aviation disaster.

A hospital source later told AFP that two injured who had been rushed to hospital had died of their wounds.

The plane crashed into a mountain northeast of Guelmim, located about 830km south of the capital Rabat, the army said in a statement.

Most of those onboard the aircraft were soldiers flying from Laayoune in Western Sahara to the coastal city of Agadir. But the army said civilians, including family members, were also on the flight.

"His Majesty the King ... and chief of the royal armed forces decrees three days of national mourning, starting on Tuesday, and the national flag will be lowered," the state-run MAP news agency announced.

An official also said the king had sent a message of condolence to the families of the victims.

Bad weather

The army statement blamed the accident on "bad weather conditions".

"Above all, it was the fog and bad weather conditions that are believed to be behind this accident. But for the moment, we don't have enough information," an interior ministry official said.

The plane slammed into a mountain around 10km from Guelmin, known as the gateway to the Sahara desert.

A provincial official said the plane had been preparing to land at the local military airport at Guelmin when "a huge pall of smoke came from the mountain". He said the plane had hit the well known mountain of Sayyert.

The bodies of several victims have been recovered from the mountainside and taken to the military hospital at Guelmin, the army said in the statement.

The US-made Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a turbo-prop military transport plane in use in dozens of countries around the world.

"This is a military plane that is used for the transport of troops, but also of their families. It is widely used in the Sahara," the interior ministry official said.

Tuesday's crash was the country's worst air disaster involving a military aircraft. In December 2001, a twin-engined plane used by the paramilitary police crashed in southern Morocco with at least five people on board.

 

Displaced Ivorians 'too afraid to return' - Africa

More than half a million people remain displaced by Ivory Coast's post-election conflict and many are too afraid to return home for fear of ethnic reprisals, Amnesty International says in a report.

The London-based human-rights organisation says that forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the president, were reportedly involved in killings and other abuses during their battle to oust Laurent Gbagbo.

"Serious human rights violations including torture, enforced disappearances and extra-judicial executions have been committed in Ivory Coast since the arrest of former president Laurent Gbagbo on April 11," the 44-page report released on Thursday said.

It said both sides had committed crimes.

Gbagbo's removal in April ended months of violent power struggle over a disputed election in November 2010.

Most of the abuses, and all of the killings, that Amnesty International documented happened in April and May, as the West African country - the world's biggest cocoa producer - was still emerging from a conflict that killed at least 3,000 people and displaced more than a million.

The report further said the crimes, which were worst in the volatile west of the country, a tinderbox of ethnic and land tensions, had created a climate of fear preventing tens of thousands of refugees from returning home for fear of reprisals.

"It is therefore not surprising that the number of displaced people and refugees, the overwhelming number of whom belong to ethnic groups perceived as supporters of Laurent Gbagbo, remains very high," the report said.

Some 670,000 Ivorians remained displaced at the end of June, it said, quoting UN refugee agency figures, and 55,000 people were still displaced in the main commercial city of Abidjan.

Commission of inquiry

Much of the persistent lawlessness, including beatings and intimidation of civilians, was being perpetrated by ethnic fighters from Ouattara's Dioula tribe called Dozos.

These are allied to his former armed group which is currently being integrated into the national army.

Ouattara signed a decree on Wednesday establishing a commission of inquiry into crimes committed during the post-election crisis, giving it six months to reach conclusions.

He also wants to try Gbagbo and his senior aides currently detained in the north of the country for war crimes, aims which may fit ill with his goal of reconciling in a deeply divided country.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court has been carrying out preliminary research and may soon order an investigation into the most grave crimes committed during the post-election civilian conflict.

Amnesty International recommended it be expanded to cover all crimes committed since a rebellion cut the country in two in 2002.

Gbagbo's supporters complain that not a single member of Ouattara's camp has been arrested for alleged crimes, despite evidence of abuses by the former rebel troops.

"In order to end this cycle of violations and reprisals, it is essential to ensure justice for all victims, whatever their political affiliation or ethnic group," Amnesty International said.

 

Morocco renews call to mend ties with Algeria - Africa

Morocco's King Mohammed has renewed calls to normalise ties and reopen borders with wealthier neighbour Algeria, saying that Rabat wants to implement plans for an integrated North African economic bloc.

In a television address on Saturday to mark the 12th anniversary of his reign, 47-year old King Mohammed said that Morocco "remains committed to building the Maghreb Union as a strategic choice".

"We are determined to work ... to overcome the obstacles which unfortunately hinder the implementation of this project," King Mohammed said.

Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia formed the Arab Maghreb Union in 1989 to emulate the European Union model of economic and political integration.

The project has never been implemented due mainly to differences between Algeria and Morocco over the disputed Western Sahara territory.

Closed border

Morocco looks forward to starting "a new dynamic for the settlement of all pending issues as a prelude to a full normalisation of bilateral relations between our two brotherly countries, including the reopening of land borders," he said.

The land border between the two countries has been shut since 1994, when Algeria reacted to Morocco imposing visa requirements on its citizens.

Following a shooting attack in Marrakesh, Morocco suspected the gunmen who killed two Spaniards had ties to Algeria and required visas for Algerian citizens.

Prickly relations have kept the frontier shut ever since, hampering trade flows across North Africa. 

Economists estimate the closed land border costs Morocco about 2 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product, mainly in potential tourist and trade flows.

A series of high-level visits by Moroccan and Algerian officials in the past few months prompted local media, and some Western diplomats, to say the border, which runs 1,559km from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sahara desert,  could be reopened soon.

Morocco has recently been invited to join the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), but the King has remained tight-lipped in his reaction and did not mention the GCC invitation in his speech.

 

Eritrea 'planned to bomb AU summit' - Africa

Eritrea tried to attack an African Union summit in neighbouring Ethiopia in January and is bankrolling al-Qaeda-linked Somali rebels through its embassy in Kenya, a UN report has revealed.

The report, from the body's monitoring group on Somalia and Eritrea, said Eritrean intelligence personnel were active in Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya and Somalia, and that the country's actions posed a threat to security and peace in the region.

"Whereas Eritrean support to foreign armed opposition groups has in the past been limited to conventional military operations, the plot to disrupt the African Union summit in Addis Ababa in January 2011, which envisaged mass casualty attacks against civilian targets and the strategic use of explosives to create a climate of fear, represents a qualitative shift in Eritrean tactics," the report obtained by the Reuters news agency said.

The plan was to attack the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, with a car bomb as African leaders took breaks, according to the report.

The attackers also planned to blow up Africa's largest market to "kill many people" and attack the area between the office of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's prime minister, and the Sheraton Hotel where most heads of state stay during AU summits.

The UN said while past Eritrean support for rebel groups in both Somalia and Ethiopia had to be seen in the context of an unresolved border dispute with Ethiopia, the new approach was a threat to the whole of the Horn and east Africa.

"The fact that the same Eritrean officers responsible for the planning and direction of this operation are also involved, both in supervisory and operational roles, in external operations in Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia and Sudan implies an enhanced level of threat to the region as a whole," the report said.

Eritrea has repeatedly denied any involvement in funding rebel groups in the region. In June it rejected claims it had anything to do with the Addis Ababa bomb plot as "nonsensical remarks" with no legal basis.

Araya Desta, the Eritrean ambassador to the UN, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that the report is "a [work of] fiction", calling it a "fabricated drama" which is "outrageous and ridiculous".

"Eritrea has no record of acts of terrorism. Ethiopians are our brothers and sisters, there is no reason why we should target them," Desta said.

He said that the report shows the UN monitoring group's bias against Eritrea and that it is "part of a wider scheme to push for more sanctions on Eritrea".

"It 2006 they said Eritrea has 2,000 soldiers in Somalia. That was in the report. But when Ethiopians invaded Somalia at the end of 2006, they couldn't find even a single Eritrean," the ambassador said.

"This is a clear bias of the monitoring group."

Orders from Eritrea

The UN has slapped an arms embargo on the Red Sea state, as well as a travel ban and an assets freeze on Eritrean political and military leaders who it says are violating an arms embargo on Somalia.

Ethiopian intelligence officials uncovered the plot to set off multiple bombs in Addis Ababa at the AU summit, an event typically attended by more than 30 African leaders, in January this year.

The UN report said all but one of the people arrested received all their training and orders directly from Eritrean officers. The other detainee was also in regular contact with an Ethiopian rebel group, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).

"Although ostensibly an OLF operation, it was conceived, planned, supported and directed by the external operations directorate of the Government of Eritrea, under the leadership of General Te'ame," the report said.

The equipment seized included C4 plastic explosives in food sacks, gas cylinders, detonators and a sniper rifle.
   
General Te'ame told one of the plotters that the plan was to make "Addis Ababa like Baghdad", according to the report.
   
However, in an interview with UN investigators, one of the men arrested, Omar Idriss Mohamed, said the aim was not to kill African leaders but to show them that Ethiopia was not safe.
   
"By so doing, some people may start to listen to what Eritrea is saying about Ethiopia. Some Arab States will be sympathetic to this view," he was quoted as saying.
   
According to the UN report, Omar is an OLF member who was approached by the Eritrean security services though Colonel Gemachew. Omar, who visited Eritrea in 2009 and 2010, became the Addis team leader for the plot.
   
The UN report included a letter from Romania confirming a sniper rifle found in the possession of one of the bomb plotters had been sold to Eritrea in 2004.
   
The report included payment slips to the plotters in Addis Ababa through money transfers. The plotters told the UN that an Eritrean colonel had arranged for the transfers via intermediaries in Sudan and Kenya.
   
Ethiopia routinely accuses Eritrea of supporting rebel groups. Zenawi, the prime minister, declared in April that his country would support Eritrean guerrillas fighting to overthrow Isaias Afewerki, the Eritrean president.

 

UN peacekeepers killed by landmine in Abyei - Africa

 

 

At least four Ethiopian UN peacekeepers have been killed by a landmine in Sudan's disputed Abyei region, a UN spokesman has said.

The deaths on Tuesday were the first to be suffered by the new UN force in the territory.

Martin Nesirky, the UN spokesman, said Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general, deplored the attack in the region, which witnessed clashes between South Sudan troops and those from the north in May.

"The Secretary-General is saddened by the death of four peacekeepers serving in the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei who were killed by a landmine detonation during a patrol in Mabok, southeast of Abyei town," Nesirky said.

Seven other peacekeepers were wounded in the explosion, he said.

The UN Security Council in June authorised the deployment of 4,200 Ethiopian troops to the Abyei region for six months.

North and South Sudan both hope to include Abyei in their territory.

South Sudan seceded from the north to form a new nation on July 9 in line with the results of a January referendum held as part of a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the north and south.

Khartoum and Juba have yet to agree on who will control Abyei, stirring fears that the long-running quarrel over the region could imperil the secession and spark a broader conflict.