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{{At least 24 members of a vigilante group in northeastern Nigeria have been killed in an ambush during a botched attempt to arrest Boko Haram members, security officials said. }}

The officials said fighters from the rebel group wearing army uniforms ambushed more than 100 vigilantes on Friday.

“They were ambushed even before they got to the Boko Haram camps,” one of the youth vigilantes Masta Moh’d, who was not present during the attack near the town of Monguno in Borno state, but had heard from several of the survivors, told the Reuters news agency on Saturday.

He said more than 100 of the vigilantes had participated in the raid, which turned sour when the fighters, seen as the main security threat to Africa’s top energy producer, ambushed them as they entered the town’s outskirts.

Officials claim another 34 people are missing after the attack.

A member of the government’s mixed military and police Joint Task Force, who declined to be named, confirmed the death toll from the incident as 24.

Aljazeera

Sierra Leone police on Thursday raided the offices of the main opposition party in the northern town of Makeni.

According to reports, officers from the Criminal Investigations Department were acting on ‘intelligence’ information, which alleged that arms and ammunitions had been kept in Sierra Leone Peoples Party’s (SLPP) premises.

The army offices allegedly planned the foiled mutiny in the town, which is the head quarter of the northern region and also the home of President Ernest Bai Koroma.

Reports on Friday said the detained soldiers were recently transferred to the CID headquarters for further investigations.

The men who raided the opposition offices alleged that there was an “illegal gathering” by men in military uniform on August 15 in the same premises.

This allegedly took place on the same day SLPP supporters were supposed to be travelling to the southern city of Bo for their party`s convention.

Truckloads of police officers barricaded the area and imposed a temporary curfew during the operation.

This comes a few days after the controversial detention of the mayor of Bo, Harold Tucker.

He was briefly detained on suspicion of involvement in a “coup plot”.

Opposition supporters are now hinting at compensation demands for the “national and international embarrassment” the incident has caused them.

NMG

{{A court in Ghana on Friday rejected a request to extradite a senior ally of former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, saying the warrant issued by Ivorian authorities was politically motivated.}}

Justin Kone Katinan, Gbagbo’s former budget minister, was arrested in August last year in Accra on an international warrant accusing him of masterminding the looting of banks in the Ivorian capital.

Ivory Coast’s decision to pursue Gbagbo’s supporters for various crimes during the violent political standoff after the disputed 2010 election, has angered the opposition and made reconciliation efforts with the Gbagbo camp difficult.

Gbagbo is awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity committed during a brief 2011 civil war.

After several months of hearings, the court dismissed the robbery charges on Friday saying evidence provided by authorities was not credible.

“Overall, I hold the view that the alleged crimes cannot be devoid of political persecution and I therefore discharge and acquit the accused,” Magistrate Aboagye Tanoh said.

The Ivorian government was not immediately available to comment and Ghanaian prosecutors who led the case for Ivory Coast, said they were yet to decide whether to appeal against the decision.

Relations between the two top cocoa producing neighbors soured after several senior Gbagbo supporters sought refuge in Ghana after the Ivorian civil war ended in 2011.

Ivory Coast said Ghana was not doing enough to control pro-Gbagbo allies who were using the country as a base to regroup and carry out plots to destabilize President Alassane Ouattara’s new government, a charge Ghana denied.

In February, one of Gbagbo’s most vocal allies and leader of his youth movement Charles Ble Goude, was arrested and handed over to Ivory Coast.

However, Friday’s court decision is the second legal victory for Katinan, who has sought political refuge in Ghana.

Last October, another court in Accra dismissed murder charges brought by Ivorian authorities against Katinan for the killing of two men during the war in 2011.

Katinan’s lawyer said the ruling reinforced their view that Katinan was being persecuted for political reasons.

“We are happy for him now because this ruling would enable him enjoy his liberties as an international refugee, rather than a wanted criminal,” lead lawyer Patrick Sogbodjo told media.

wirestory