IGIHE

Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

  • UK report: Some Gulenists involved in Turkish coup

    {‘Relative lack of hard evidence’ that Gulen movement as a whole was behind coup attempt, UK Parliament reports says.}

    Some followers of cleric and businessman Fethullah Gulen were involved in last summer’s failed coup in Turkey, a UK Parliament report says, adding that there is no evidence to suggest the Gulen Movement as a whole was behind the plot.

    The Foreign Affairs Committee’s (FCO) report released on Saturday said the evidence of individual Gulenists’ involvement in the attempt to overthrow the government was “mostly anecdotal or circumstantial, sometimes premised on information from confessions or informants…”.

    The report also said that such evidence “is so far inconclusive in relation to the organisation as a whole and its leadership”.

    As well as the coup, the 82-page report also focuses on the UK’s ties with Turkey; the threat from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK); and the status of democracy in the country.

    Since the July 15 coup attempt, Turkey has accused Pennsylvania-based Gulen of being behind the push to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    During the failed coup, about 300 people, the vast majority of them civilians, were killed across Turkey as rebel soldiers targeted the government by bombing state buildings.

    “The FCO knows too little for itself about who was responsible for the coup attempt in Turkey, or about the ‘Gulenists’ … whom the Turkish government exclusively blames for the coup,” the report said.

    “We found that the Turkish government’s account of the Gulenists and the coup, which the FCO seems willing to accept broadly at face value, is not substantiated by hard, publicly available evidence, although as yet uncontradicted by the same standard.”

    The report cited a “lack of transparency”, adding that it was unlikely Gulenists were the only elements involved in the coup.

    Turkey is seeking Gulen’s extradition from the US, a request which has not been granted.

    As well as accusing Gulen’s network of staging the coup attempt, Turkey says it is behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary.

    The FCO said that while Turkey faced a threat following the coup attempt against the backdrop of increased “terrorism”, it disagreed with some tough measures by the Turkish government under a state of emergency.

    “Turkey is an important strategic partner facing a volatile period,” said Crispin Blunt, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

    “It needs and deserves our support, but that support needs to include our critique where Turkish policy is not in its own, or our joint long-term interests: these are regional security and stability as well as strong and accountable institutions in Turkey.”

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • ‘No miracles’ in Geneva talks as Syria fighting rages

    {A fifth round of UN-backed Syria talks is under way in Geneva amid low expectations as violence on the ground escalates.}

    United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura has warned not to expect “miracles” as a new round of UN-backed talks between rival sides in Syria’s conflict resumed amid ongoing fighting across the country.

    As rebel fighters in Syria pushed on with a major offensive against government forces in the central province of Hama, representatives of the two sides in the talks held in Geneva traded allegations over developments on the ground.

    Syrian government envoy Bashar al-Jaafari accused the opposition of intentionally undermining the talks, saying an escalation of attacks over the past few days is “pushing everybody toward a total failure and fiasco in the political and diplomatic process”.

    For his part, Nasr al-Hariri, the Syrian opposition’s chief negotiator in the talks, accused the government of targeting areas with civilians and carrying out arbitrary arrests.

    On the agenda for the fifth round of the Geneva talks is governance – political transition, the constitution and elections – as well as counterterrorism at the request of Damascus.

    Deadlock remains over most of the toughest issues, notably President Bashar al-Assad’s fate, with the opposition insisting he cede power and the government declaring the subject off limits.

    After a two-hour meeting with de Mistura, Jaafari said “terrorism” needed to be the priority.

    In the opposite camp, Hariri said the opposition was committed to finding a political solution, but insisted such a deal could not include Assad.

    “We reaffirm that we here to rid our country from terrorism and I say that Syria will not be free from terrorism of Daesh [ISIL] … unless it is liberated first from the state terrorism practised by the regime,” Hariri told reporters.

    The two sides are meeting separately with the UN.

    “All of them have to talk about all four [issues]”, de Mistura told reporters following the first full day of the round. “That is [the] deal.”

    De Mistura said he would aim to mesh the ideas shared on all subjects by both sides when the round ends next Friday.

    “I am not expecting miracles, I am not expecting breakthroughs … and I am not expecting breakdowns,” the UN envoy said, reiterating that agreement on the agenda was itself a mark of progress.

    De Mistura has recently been shuttling between Moscow, Riyadh, and Ankara, and talking directly with the United States, in preparation for the talks.

    He urged the backers of separate talks in the Kazakh capital Astana – which involve Russia and Turkey and are supposed to guarantee a ceasefire – to resume more negotiations in an effort to bring the fighting to an end.

    “Our expectation and strong suggestion to the guarantors to the Astana process that they do retake the situation in hand and that hopefully there will be new Astana meeting as soon as possible in order to control the situation, which at the moment is worrisome,” he told reporters.

    {{Fighting continues}}

    In Syria, rebels were advancing in Hama province, as part of their biggest offensive against government forces in months.

    The city of Hama remained under government control, but the opposition has gained ground in the countryside; rebels have seized 11 villages and several ammunition depots since Tuesday.

    The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor reported fresh violence on Friday, including shelling by government forces of areas in Sahl al-Ghab, northwest of Hama, and ongoing clashes in the countryside north of the city, as the army sought to retake territory and stop rebels from capturing a military airport.

    Clashes also renewed in the capital, Damascus, witnesses earlier said.

    Rebels fought with soldiers on the edge of the city centre in the Jobar district for a fifth day on Thursday.

    Forces loyal to Assad’s government conducted artillery and air strikes in a bid to restore control of positions they lost earlier this week, after surprise attacks by rebels in the northeast of the city.

    Reporting from Geneva, Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons said the talks were not off to a good start given the latest surge fighting in Syria.

    “It’s not a good start in the battlefield, in the sense that there is escalation, and it’s not a good start here in terms of encouragement towards … peace,” Simmons said.

    ‘Assad regime targeting schools, hospitals’

    Earlier in the day, Hariri accused the government of not being committed to peace.

    “I would like to remind you that since the beginning of the last round of talks, last month in Geneva, at least 11 schools have been targeted, in addition to at least 11 medical centres, including hospitals and makeshift clinics, and five markets by the Assad regime’s air force and the countries that are supporting the regime.”

    Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Beirut, said that the rebels were aiming to put more pressure on the international community as they tried to bring about a political solution to the crisis.

    “This is the first time in months that we’ve seen momentum being built by the rebels to take over ground, particularly in Hama,” he said.

    “[The rebels] are sending a clear message to the international community that, despite the fact that they lost Aleppo last year … they can still change the reality on the ground.”

    Marwan Kabalan, an analyst at the Doha Institute’s Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies, told Al Jazeera that little had been achieved in the talks, which were entering their fifth round.

    Kabalan said that the parties should be discussing four main themes – governance, fighting “terrorism”, the constitution, and elections – but stressed that little was expected from this latest round.

    “Most of the regional and international powers are not yet actually committed to solving this crisis,” he said, adding that the US was focusing more on the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL, also known as ISIS] while Turkey’s focus was on the actions of Kurdish groups in Syria.

    De Mistura said Syria's warring side will tackle all agenda items at the Geneva peace talks

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • South Sudan’s leaders force famine on their people, analysts say

    {South Sudan’s famine is a disaster created by its leaders, say analysts who argue that while food may save some lives now it is only peace that can bring lasting relief.}

    But peace is as distant as ever with an international community that appears paralysed, while the men ruling over the country’s misery are unmoved by pleas for them to lay down their weapons.

    There is no catastrophic drought in South Sudan, no natural driver for the famine afflicting 100,000 and threatening a million others.

    Rather there is a nasty, stop-start three-year civil war in which starvation has become a battlefield tactic.

    “Only a political plan to end South Sudan’s national crisis, not food aid, can bring actual famine relief to South Sudanese,” said Alan Boswell, a conflict analyst and writer on South Sudan.

    The crisis is “not accidental but by design” Boswell said, adding that the government uses “food blockades as a weapon of war”.

    It is no coincidence that areas afflicted by famine are opposition areas, home to mostly ethnic Nuer and controlled for the most part by rebels, as a leaked report by United Nations investigators said.

    “The bulk of evidence suggests that the famine in Unity State has resulted from protracted conflict and, in particular, the cumulative toll of repeated military operations undertaken by the government in southern Unity beginning in 2014,” said the confidential 48-page report.

    South Sudan government forces and allied militias have denied access to — and sometimes attacked — aid workers and looted relief supplies.

    Michele Sison, the US deputy representative to the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting on Thursday that the government’s obstacles to humanitarian work in the famine-struck areas “may amount to deliberate starvation tactics.”

    The United States, Britain and France on Thursday once again raised the idea of sanctions or a weapons embargo which was rejected by the Security Council in December with eight of the 15 members abstaining.

    {{Downward spiral }}

    South Sudan’s leaders fought for decades for independence, but once they got it in 2011, the fighting turned inward.

    A long-standing power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar sparked fighting in Juba in December 2013 which quickly turned into a conflict throughout the country between Kiir’s Dinka supporters and Machar’s Nuer community.

    It has been characterised by appalling brutality on both sides with ethnic massacres, the use of child soldiers, mass rape, sexual slavery, murder, torture, abduction and, in a few recorded cases, forced cannibalism.

    Roughly a third of the population — 2.5 million people — have been forced from their homes while 5.5 million rely on food aid to survive.

    East Africa’s regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) was tasked with leading peace efforts, however these collapsed along with a 2015 power-sharing peace deal when conflict again erupted in Juba in July last year.

    Since then the fighting has metastasised, spreading across the country and among ethnic groups jockeying for political and military advantage and to protect their communities.

    Regional peace efforts have borne no fruit and the UN has been unable to push through an arms embargo or compel Kiir’s government to accept the deployment of a regional protection force.

    {{War lucrative for leaders}}

    UN chief Antonio Guterres on Thursday denounced “a refusal by the leadership to even acknowledge the crisis or to fulfill its responsibilities to end it.”

    Instead, just days after famine was declared on February 20, triggering a ramping up of humanitarian efforts, Juba raised foreign worker visa fees a hundred-fold to as much as $10,000 (9,300 euros).

    Foreign media access to South Sudan has also been curtailed with new bureaucratic barriers erected to deny access to journalists who have reported critically on the government in the past.

    Critics say the silence of South Sudan’s government and rebel leaders is fuelled by corruption.

    “The ultimate prize is control of a kleptocratic, winner-take-all state with institutions that have been hijacked by government officials and their commercial collaborators for the purposes of self-enrichment and brutal repression of dissent,” said John Prendergast, founder of the Enough Project advocacy group, who has many years’ experience of South Sudan and knows its leaders personally.

    Meanwhile, reports, including from the Enough Project, have exposed the squirreling away of money and the purchase of properties and luxury goods by leaders and their associates on both sides of the conflict.

    “War has been hell for South Sudan’s people, but it has been very lucrative for the country’s leaders,” said Prendergast.

    Source:AFP

  • Gambia to set up truth commission to probe Jammeh’s rule

    {The Gambia will set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate abuses committed during ex-President Yahya Jammeh’s rule, the justice minister has said.
    The finances of Mr Jammeh would also be investigated, Abubacarr Tambadou added.
    People would be encouraged to confess to crimes, and victims would be offered compensation, he said.}

    The former regime was accused of widespread torture and enforced disappearances during its 22-year rule.

    There were also unconfirmed allegations that more than $11m (£8.8m) went missing from The Gambia’s state coffers following Mr Jammeh’s departure in January.

    He fled to Equatorial Guinea in January after regional troops entered the tiny West African state to force him to accept defeat to property developer Adama Barrow in elections the previous month.

    “A Truth and Reconciliation Commission with appropriate reparations for victims will be set up within the next six months and public hearings will be expected to commence by the end of the year,” Mr Tambadou said in a statement.

    Former intelligence chief Yankuba Badjie was arrested in January, making him the first of Mr Jammeh’s security officials to be taken into custody by the new government.

    {{Five notorious cases for The Gambia’s TRC:}}

    Opposition member Solo Sandeng allegedly beaten to death in detention in April 2016

    Journalist Alagie Abdoulie Ceesay allegedly forced to drink cooking oil and beaten unconsciousness in detention in July 2015

    Ex-army chief of staff Ndure Cham allegedly ordered to dig his grave and shot dead in 2013 for plotting coup

    Journalist Ebrima Manneh missing since he left his newsroom on July 2006

    Newspaper editor Deyda Hydara shot dead in his car in December 2004

    {{Jammeh’s inglorious end}}

    After his election victory, Mr Barrow pledged that his government would not seek vengeance against officials of the former regime, and would instead set up a South Africa-styled Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal wounds of the past.

    In a 2015 report, campaign group Human Rights Watch said Mr Jammeh’s regime “frequently committed serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture against those who voiced opposition”.

    Torture methods included the “electroshock of body parts, including genitals and dripping melted plastic bags onto the skin”, it said.

    The regime relied heavily on its intelligence agency to target opponents, and was also accused of running paramilitary hit squads.

    It denied the allegation, insisting that it upheld the law.

    Source:BBC

  • British scientists in world-first TB breakthrough

    {British scientists have made a world-first breakthrough in the diagnosis of tuberculosis.}

    Researchers in Oxford and Birmingham say they can isolate different strains of the disease using a process called genome sequencing.

    It means patients who may have waited months to get the right drugs can now be diagnosed in just a few days – so they have a greater chance of recovery.

    Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the breakthrough “will save lives”.

    Cases of TB in the UK have begun falling recently, but England still has one of the highest rates in Europe.

    The scientists who made the discovery say genome sequencing allows them to identify the DNA of different samples in little more than a week.

    {{Drug-resistant strains}}

    Speedy diagnosis means patients can begin their recovery much quicker and also reduces the chances of the infection being spread.

    Consultant microbiologist Dr Grace Smith said: “We’re able to provide information on the species of the organism and the drugs to which it may be resistant if it’s TB.”
    Public Health England says it is the first time anyone in the world has applied the technique on such a large scale.

    The breakthrough comes after experts warned that a rise in drug-resistant strains of TB was threatening to derail efforts to eradicate the disease.

    A new study found one in five global cases of the disease is now resistant to at least one major treatment drug.

    Health secretary Mr Hunt said: “If we can show that using the most modern technology can help reduce the time it takes to identify who has got TB and get them onto a treatment programme, we can move closer to what we all want, which is to eradicate TB from the shores of the country.”

    Source:BBC

  • South Sudan army official survives attack

    {A South Sudanese military official on Wednesday survived an assassination after unknown gunmen in a brazen attempt opened fire at him in a local restaurant in Moyo District.}

    Capt Oliver Duku, the South Sudan Spy Chief based in Kajo-Keji in South Sudan, managed to disarm his attackers who escaped shortly after the incident. He had come to Moyo town to transact some business.

    The officer in charge of Moyo police station, Mr Denis Ocircan, confirmed the incident. “He was attacked by two armed men when he was taking tea opposite a petrol station. In the process, two shots were fired,” he said.

    He said police had already commenced investigations in an attempt to track down on the two gunmen believed to be South Sudan nationals.

    Capt Duku, in an interview with Saturday Monitor, said he had been having tea with friends when he was attacked.

    “I saw a man coming from behind while shouting out my name, that he will kill me. He pointed a pistol at me. In the process I grabbed the gun and two bullets were released after overpowering them,” he narrated.

    {{Suspect identified}}

    Capt Duku, who says he has faced similar attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, identified one of the assailants as a businessman in Kajo-Keji County.

    “He was the very one who equipped the Kuku youth with bows and arrows and pangas to cause attacks in Kajo-Keji County against Madi people,” Capt Duku said. The Saturday Monitor could not independently verify this claim.

    Mr Michael Nambafu, the Regional Police Commander North West Nile Region, said police were still combing refugee camps sheltering the South Sudan nationals who fled violence from their country because some of them could have entered with guns into the country.

    Leaders in the area have also expressed concern over “South Sudanese spies” who they claim have infiltrated the camps. They argue this could spark violence in the area.

    Source:Daily Monitor

  • Uganda:Police to get bulletproof vests, escort motorcycles

    {Following last week’s brutal killing of Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIGP) Andrew Felix Kaweesi alongside his driver and bodyguard, the police authorities have resolved to provide body armour and escort motorcycles to personnel working with its senior officials.}

    Speaking to Saturday Monitor on Friday, Mr Asan Kasingye, the newly-appointed police spokesperson, who replaced slain Kaweesi, said police will provide bullet proof vests to all bodyguards and drivers of senior officers so that they can be in position to engage armed attackers.

    “We have already discussed that issue and it comes with our mandate to protect citizens and their property. We cannot protect others when we cannot provide for our own officers,” Mr Kasingye said.

    {{Deployment}}

    The police spokesperson said the Force was to deploy covert and overt security personnel to monitor the security of senior officials at their places of work and residence.

    “As per now, we cannot provide lead cars because we don’t have enough. But we have enough motorcycles and we are going to start with the mechanism we have currently,” he said.

    The police authorities are also to step up surveillance systems at homes of senior officials as well as the police stations and barracks.

    Mr Kasingye said Crime Intelligence and Criminal Investigations Department have been tasked to investigate all the current and previous security threats that targeted senior officers.

    The killing of AIGP Kaweesi has seen more than 10 suspects held at the high-security detention centre at Nalufenya Police Station in Jinja District.

    Kaweesi's body is wheeled into Rubaga Chatedral Church for a requiem mass, Kaweesi was killed with his body guard and driver.

    Source:Daily Monitor

  • ICC awards ‘symbolic’ $250 each to Congo war crimes victims

    {In its first such decision, the International Criminal Court on Friday awarded $250 dollars as “symbolic” damages to each victim of a former Congolese warlord, a sum swiftly dismissed as meaningless by those who lost homes and loved ones in a militia attack on their village 14 years ago.}

    The order was a landmark step for the tribunal, set up in 2002 to prosecute the world’s worst atrocities, marking the first time it has awarded individual reparations and placed monetary values on the harm caused by such crimes.

    Presiding judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut acknowledged the amount of $250 to each of the 297 victims of Germain Katanga “does not make up for the totality of the crimes”, estimating the total damage caused in the 2003 attack at $3.7 million.

    But in announcing both collective and individual reparations, he said he hoped it would bring some “measure of relief” and help victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo rebuild their lives.

    The ICC sentenced Katanga to 12 years in jail in 2014 after convicting him of five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the February 2003 ethnic attack on Bogoro, a village in troubled Ituri Province.

    He was accused of supplying weapons to his militia which went on a rampage, shooting and hacking to death with machetes some 200 people.

    Katanga, who watched the proceedings by video-link from a jail in Kinshasa where he is on trial on separate charges, was also found liable for $1 million of the total compensation, though the court recognised that he was penniless, or “indigent”, and had no home or possessions.

    It asked that he consider making a public apology or writing a letter to the victims, or even attending a public reconciliation ceremony.

    {{Two days of beer }}

    “These individual reparations don’t have any symbolic value. Today $250 doesn’t mean anything in the DRC,” Salomon Kisembo Byaruhanga, a local tribal chief, told AFP.

    “Those who will get it will most likely waste it all away on beer in two days,” he added, saying it would be far better to rebuild a village or construct a memorial.

    In its 1,000-page reparations order, the court said it had assessed the total damage at $3,752,620. For instance it had valued each destroyed Bogoro home at $600, while the cost of each harvest lost that year was $150.

    It also estimated that the psychological harm suffered by a person for the death of a close family member was $8,000, or $4,000 for a more distant relative. Most of the order is confidential to protect the identity of victims.

    While no total sum was given for the collective reparations, the court said it should go towards projects to help the victims with housing, education and “income-generating activities” as well as counselling.

    The Trust Fund for Victims, an independent body set up under the tribunal’s founding guidelines, has now been asked to consider using its resources to pay the reparations and to come up with a plan by late June.

    Court officials said the fund could release up to $1 million in the Katanga case.

    Legal representatives for the victims had assessed the damage at $16.4 million in a filing to the court last year. They calculated that 228 homes were destroyed, that the school was lost and that hundreds of cattle and other livestock had fled or been killed.

    {{We’ve buried our dead }}

    “What will $250 change in our lives?” asked Jean Bosco Lalo, a coordinator for the Ituri Civil Society group of local associations.

    “Our communities have already turned the page. Everyone has rebuilt their homes. We’ve buried our dead.”

    Rights groups however welcomed the award as an “important decision.”

    “Progressively, the ICC is developing the ways and means to respond to victims needs through its jurisprudence,” said Carla Ferstman, director of the victims advocacy group REDRESS.

    The Trust Fund for Victims has $5 million available, of which $1 million has been set aside for the case of Thomas Lubanga, sentenced in 2012 to 14 years for conscripting child soldiers in the DRC.

    In October, judges approved “symbolic reparations” to create a “living memorial”. But a final decision on collective reparations for Lubanga’s victims is still awaited.

    Former Congolese warlord militiaman Germain Katanga at ICC in The Hague. He is liable to pay any compensation.

    Source:AFP

  • Kenya:Prepare to go home in August, Raila tells Jubilee

    {ODM leader Raila Odinga has told the Jubilee administration to prepare to go home in August 8 for failing Kenyans.}

    During a tour of the Uwanja wa Mbuzi Stadium, a state-of-the-art multi-purpose facility in Kongowea, Nyali, the Opposition chief accused President Uhuru Kenyatta of taking the country back to the repressive days where all orders came from the head of State.

    Mr Odinga was reacting to comments by President Kenyatta in the recent past where he vowed to teach Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho a lesson, accusing the county boss of pestering him and interfering with his work.

    “I was surprised recently when President Uhuru claimed he can stop people from attending a public rally. This cannot happen as provided by the constitution that Kenyans voted for in 2013,” he said.

    Mr Odinga said the new constitution created two levels of government which have distinctive powers.

    “Jubilee must know that we have the national and county governments which should work complementing each other. They are not in competition. If the Jubilee government can’t accept this, then there will be problems,” he said.

    He supported Governor Hassan Joho’s track record saying the governor had initiated development projects in the county, as opposed to claims that he had done nothing.

    “This modern stadium here is a true testimony of Joho’s achievements. This ground will help people to relax, exercise and play games. It’s a modern facility found in a few places in the world,” he said.

    He referred an incident where Governor Joho was stopped by police from attending President Kenyatta’s function at Mtongwe as “an insult”.

    “You cannot stop a Governor from attending a public function, more so in his county. This is in the old constitution, not the one we are using. Every Kenyan has the freedom to attend any such function,” he said.

    Mr Odinga landed in Mombasa Saturday morning and is expected to address a public rally at Tononoka grounds on Sunday.

    ODM leader Raila Odinga and Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho address Kongowea residents at Uwanja wa Mbuzi, Mombasa on March 25, 2017.

    Source:Daily Nation

  • Tanzania:‘Queen of Ivory’ decries delay in court case

    {The alleged ‘Queen of Ivory,’ Chinese national Yang Feng Clan yesterday broke her silence over the prosecution’s failure to call witnesses in the trial under which she is accused with two other businessmen of illegally dealing in elephant tusks worth 5.4bn/-.}

    She told Principal Resident Magistrate Huruma Shaidi at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court in Dar es Salaam when the trial came for hearing that for four consecutive sessions the prosecution has failed to summon any witness, thus causing unnecessary delays of disposal of the matter.

    “This is not fair, your honour. President Magufuli says Hapa Kazi Tu, but we do not see any implementation of this slogan before this court. I am in remand and I have been denied bail. Where is justice now?” she queried.

    The trial magistrate assured the accused persons that the case will be disposed of soon as it has been causelisted in a special session. He disclosed that the hearing session will resume on March 29. Other accused persons in the matter are Manase Philemon (39) and Salivius Matembo (39).

    In the trial, the prosecution alleges that between January 1, 2000 and May 22, 2014 in the city, all the three accused persons carried on business of the said government trophies. They allegedly bought and sold 706 pieces of elephant tusks weighing 1889kg valued at 5,435,865,000/-.

    The prosecution alleged that within the same period and place, intentionally, Clan organised, managed and financed a criminal racket by collecting, transporting or exporting and selling the elephant tusks without having permit of the director of wildlife or CITES permit.

    Source:Daily News