Prosecution may appeal the acquittal by ICC on charges of crimes against humanity
Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo has been released on bail to Belgium following his acquittal by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity, the court said Tuesday.
Belgium said on Saturday that it had agreed in principle to host Gbagbo pending a possible prosecution appeal against his acquittal, but that final arrangements were being made.
Continue reading...More than 750 people have died of Ebola in recent months in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with efforts to contain the outbreak hampered by conflict – and fear of treatment centres
Photographs by Kate Holt
Continue reading...Al-Shabaab says it carried out Mogadishu bombing and shot manager of Bossaso port
Islamic militants in Somalia have shot dead a senior manager running the port of Bossaso in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, and a car bomb has killed at least 11 in Mogadishu.
The assassination of Paul Anthony Formosa, a Maltese citizen who worked for the Dubai government-owned P&O Ports, and the bombing in the capital, were both claimed by the extremist group al-Shabaab extremist group.
Continue reading...Sexual harassment has long been rife in Nigeria’s bustling markets. Now women are mobilising in protest
Chiezugo Obii-Okpala knows that when she visits Yaba market in Lagos she’s going to be harassed. Whether she’s shopping for clothes or hurrying past the stalls that line the road to get on a bus, she will not be left alone.
“You’re dragged, called all sorts of names, harassed – and when you don’t give into that, you’re followed around,” says the 24-year-old pharmacist.
Continue reading...Nigerian refugees are chased from homes as president stakes re-election bid on claims that Islamist group has been beaten
When Boko Haram stormed into Baga in a hail of gunfire on Boxing Day, Zara Abubakar was lying in bed, waiting for her two-week-old triplets, Maryam, Muhafat and Mohammed, to go to sleep so she could have a bath. Heart pounding, she shouted for her four other children playing in the yard to come in, covering the babies with her body. For hours they all lay inside, waiting for the battle to let up.
Then there was silence, followed by shouts of Allahu Akbar, and Baga mosque’s loudspeakers crackled into life. “Boko Haram made an announcement that they were not here for us but for the infidels [the military] and that they were now in charge,” Abubakar recounted, jogging one of the triplets in the crook of her elbow and another on her knee.
Continue reading...International criminal court freed Laurent Gbagbo on Friday after his shock acquittal
Belgium has agreed to take in the former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo following his acquittal at the international criminal court in The Hague, a foreign ministry spokesman has said.
Karl Lagatie confirmed the agreement on Saturday, and added that he did not know if the ex-president was already in Belgium.
Continue reading...First former head of state ever to stand trial at the ICC spent seven years in custody in The Hague
The international criminal court has freed the former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo after his shock acquittal in January on charges of crimes against humanity.
Supporters sang and waved flags in The Hague after judges decided to release the 73-year-old on condition that he stays in an as-yet-unnamed country pending an appeal by the prosecution.
Continue reading...At least three dead and scores trapped at Hoërskool Driehoek school near Johannesburg
At least three students have died and scores are trapped in rubble after a walkway collapsed at a school near Johannesburg, South African officials have said.
Panyaza Lesufi, the head of education for Gauteng province, gave details of the incident on Twitter shortly after the collapse at Hoërskool Driehoek high school in Vanderbijlpark.
Continue reading...Coastguard warns death toll will rise, as UN reveals six migrants die at sea each day
Scores of people are feared to have drowned off the coast of Djibouti after two migrant boats capsized, amid new warnings from the UN that six people a day die on maritime smuggling routes to Europe and elsewhere.
According to the International Organization for Migration, the alarm was raised over the latest incident after two survivors were recovered. As the search for more survivors continued, the IOM said on Wednesday that 38 people had been confirmed dead.
Continue reading...Mustafa Sanalla says specialist unit needed to end repeated seizures of oil assets by militias
The head of Libya’s national oil company has said he wants to set up a national force armed with surveillance to protect the country’s petroleum assets after repeated seizures of oil installations by militias.
Mustafa Sanalla, the chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC), said the force would require an annual budget of $10m (£7.6m) and be under the control of the UN-recognised government. But the force could include members of the Libyan National Army (LNA) headed by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the dominant figure in Libya’s east, he added.
Continue reading...Authorities believe trafficking ring lured young women to Italy to force them into prostitution
Sicilian authorities have made a series of arrests after a suspected sex trafficking ring was believed to have forced at least 15 Nigerian girls into prostitution in Italy.
Among those arrested were two Nigerian women, Rita Ihama, 38, and Monica Onaigfohe, aged 20, who police believe organised the trafficking of the women from Libya to Italy. An Italian national, Giovanni Buscemi, was also arrested on suspicion of helping facilitate the trafficking and exploitation of the girls.
Continue reading...The threat of poaching by foreign trawlers has eased for the nation’s 33,000 local fishermen, who are hauling in the rewards of a coastguard crackdown
Photographs: Nicole Schafer/Sea Shepherd
Leading QC Alex Carlile hopes to force wider scrutiny of the practice after Guardian revealed ‘dozens’ of girls subjected to abusive custom
A British peer is to table questions in parliament on the secretive practice of “breast-ironing”, after the Guardian revealed that the abusive intervention is spreading in the UK.
Alex Carlile, one of the UK’s leading QCs who is a former deputy high court judge and a member of the House of Lords, told the Guardian that he hoped to trigger a wider scrutiny of the practice in the UK.
Continue reading...Health officials battle to stop disease spreading in Kampala slums with lack of toilets and poor sanitation made worse by heavy rains
Two people have died in a new cholera outbreak in the overcrowded slums of Uganda’s capital, Kampala.
The ministry of health confirmed at the weekend that there were 43 suspected cases of cholera in the city and that two people had died. It said an emergency isolation unit had been set up.
Continue reading...Royal College of Paediatrics urged to rethink conference funding amid claims deal contravenes World Health Organization code
The Royal College of Paediatrics has been accused of breaching World Health Organization guidance after it accepted sponsorship funding from baby formula companies.
More than 100 medics and 13 health groups have written to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), urging it to drop Nestlé, Nutricia and Danone from the list of sponsors for its first international conference, to be held in Cairo on 29 January.
Continue reading...Blazes whipped up by a strong, dry wind have sent black smoke across the city and forced residents to evacuate
A wild fire that swept across Cape Town’s famous Lion’s Head mountain moved towards residential neighbourhoods on Sunday, prompting several people to evacuate their homes.
A Cape Town fire service spokesman told News 24 that 70 firefighters and 20 trucks were fighting the blaze. Local media reported that the firefighting effort was expected to last all night.
Continue reading...A South Africa-based mercenary group has been accused by one of its former members of trying to intentionally spread Aids in southern Africa in the 1980s and 1990s.
The claims are made by Alexander Jones in a documentary that premieres this weekend at the Sundance film festival. He says he spent years as an intelligence officer with the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), three decades ago, when it was masterminding coups and other violence across Africa.
Continue reading...Opposition figures are in hiding as arrests and beatings continue. But the anger at Mnangagwa’s regime persists
Activists and lawyers in Zimbabwe fear that the brutal crackdown by security forces will continue “for the foreseeable future” as authorities seek to crush all possible opposition to the ruling Zanu-PF party.
Hundreds of activists and opposition officials remain in hiding this weekend after almost two weeks of arbitrary arrests, beatings, rapes and abductions committed by police and military in the poor southern African country.
Continue reading...Perpetrators consider it a traditional measure to stop unwanted male attention
An African practice of “ironing” a girl’s chest with a hot stone to delay breast formation is spreading in the UK, with anecdotal evidence of dozens of recent cases, a Guardian investigation has established.
Community workers in London, Yorkshire, Essex and the West Midlands have told the Guardian of cases in which pre-teen girls from the diaspora of several African countries are subjected to the painful, abusive and ultimately futile practice.
Continue reading...Italian doctoral student’s family seek truth about his torture and murder in early 2016
Three years after the disappearance, torture and murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, Egypt is stonewalling Italy’s efforts to investigate.
In November, Italian prosecutors officially named five members of Egypt’s security services as subject to investigation in the case of Regeni, who went missing on 25 January 2016 aged 28. But two months on, Egypt has barely acknowledged the development.
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