Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

Army ‘kills Abu Sayyaf commander’ blamed for beheadings

{Clash on Bohol leaves several fighters dead, notably Moammar Askali, blamed for the beheading of foreign hostages.}

Soldiers battling Abu Sayyaf in central Philippines are reported to have killed a key commander of the armed group who had been blamed for the beheadings of two Canadians and a German hostage.

Military chief of staff General Eduardo Ano said troops recovered and identified the remains of Moammar Askali, also known as Abu Rami, at the scene of the battle in a coastal village on Bohol island on Tuesday.

Five other Abu Sayyaf members were killed, along with four soldiers and policemen.

Ano said troops took the picture of Askali after his death and that captured Abu Sayyaf fighters identified the the young commander.

“This is a major blow to the Abu Sayyaf,” Ano told AP news agency. “If they have further plans to kidnap innocent people somewhere, they will now have to think twice.”

He said Askali had led several fighters, who travelled by speedboats from their jungle hideouts in the southern Sulu province to Bohol, in an apparent bid to carry out another kidnapping in a region that is popular for its beach resorts and wildlife.

Sporadic gun battles between the remaining Abu Sayyaf fighters and government forces continued on Wednesday, military officials said.

At least 10 people has been killed since Tuesday in the fighting in Bohol, far from the group’s southern jungle bases.

Military officials say at least six fighters, three soldiers and a policeman have died in the ongoing gun battle in a village in the coastal town of Inabanga.

Bohol – an island province – lies near Cebu province, a bustling commercial and tourism centre.

Ronald dela Rosa, the national police chief director-general, said troops and policemen attacked the armed men early on Tuesday in Inabanga, where they had arrived aboard three boats.

It is the Abu Sayyaf’s first known attempt to carry out ransom kidnappings deep in the heartland of the central Philippines, far from its jungle lairs in the southern provinces of Sulu and Basilan.

Bohol, which is popular with tourists, lies about 640km southeast of Manila, and about an hour away by boat from Cebu province, across the busy Cebu Strait.

Abu Sayyaf fighters have crossed the sea border with Malaysia on powerful speedboats and kidnapped scores of foreign tourists in past years.

In 2001, they sailed as far as western Palawan province, where they seized 20 people from a resort.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered troops to destroy the group in Sulu and in outlying island provinces, and has threatened to declare martial law in the country’s south if the threat posed by the Abu Sayyaf and other groups aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) gets out of control.

Abu Sayyaf is still holding at least 29 captives in Sulu’s jungles, many of them foreign tugboat and cargo ship crewmen seized at the sea border between the southern Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Source:Al Jazeera

April 12, 2017
Ministers, top aides probed over Odebrecht scandal

{Almost one third of embattled President Temer’s cabinet under investigation for involvement in ‘Cash Wash’ scheme.}

Brazil’s Supreme Court has announced corruption investigations into at least eight ministers and dozens more top politicians in a sweeping decision that affects almost one third of embattled President Michel Temer’s government and many of his top allies.

The list of names under investigation released by Justice Edson Fachin on Tuesday read like a Who’s Who of Brazilian politics, tarnishing past statesmen and potential presidential candidates alike.

The list, whose contents had been subject to furious speculation and a number of leaks, became public when Fachin lifted the seal on plea bargain testimony from 77 employees of construction company Odebrecht, which has admitted paying millions of dollars in bribes.

In Sao Paulo, residents banged pots and pans in protest against political corruption, while in the capital Brasilia deputies left a session in the lower house earlier in the day as news of the list began to break.

The investigation into eight ministers, or nearly a third of the president’s cabinet, poses a serious threat to Temer’s efforts to pass austerity reforms that he says are needed to regain investor confidence and lift the economy out of its worst recession on record.

Temer’s office declined to comment.

“More than having eight ministers on the list, the biggest problem for the government is seeing its whole political nucleus there,” said Danilo Gennari, partner with Brasilia-based consultancy Distrito Relacoes Governamentais, referring to the implication of key government allies.

Among that core is Temer’s chief of staff Eliseu Padilha, an experienced politician considered key in negotiations with Congress to pass the administration’s crucial pension reform.

Padilha said he will defend himself in court.

{{‘Institutional paralysis’ }}

Temer’s ministers of foreign affairs, trade and agriculture also are under investigation, as well as the heads of both houses of Brazil’s Congress and former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.

“The political crisis will deepen and we risk an institutional paralysis because the entire Brazilian political system is under question,” opposition senator Jorge Viana, who is under investigation himself, said in a statement.

It also throws into doubt the credibility of a number of potential presidential candidates for elections in 2018, with some of the most commonly mentioned names under investigation.

PSDB party leader Aecio Neves and former Foreign Minister Jose Serra are cited on Fachin’s list, with a possible investigation of Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin referred to a lower court.

Temer has vowed to suspend ministers who are charged and dismiss any if indicted.

Tuesday’s decision to make public the names targeted in the investigation goes back to March, when Brazil’s top public prosecutor asked the Supreme Court to open 83 investigations into senior politicians based on the Odebrecht employees’ testimony.

Local media have reported the testimony accuses dozens of politicians of taking bribes to help what was once Latin America’s biggest builder win lucrative contracts with state-run oil company Petrobras.

Source:Al Jazeera

April 12, 2017
Police searching for Dortmund team bus attackers

{German football club was en route to stadium for a Champions League quarter-final when three bombs went off.}

German investigators are hunting for possible suspects responsible for three explosions that rocked Dortmund football team’s bus, injuring a player.

The assault, described by Dortmund city’s police chief as a “targeted attack” against the team, shook German football before a Champions League quarter-final at home to Monaco.

Borussia Dortmund’s team bus was attacked with explosives on Tuesday shortly before the start of the match, injuring defender Marc Bartra and forcing the quarter-final to be postponed by a day.

German police said they did not know who was behind the attack, in which three explosions went off at 7:15pm near the hotel where the team was staying, but said the team appeared to be the target.

Investigations will also focus on a letter claiming responsibility for the attack that was found close to the site of the blasts.

“The letter claims responsibility for what happened,” prosecutor Sandra Luecke said late Tuesday, telling journalists that “its authenticity is being verified”.

German authorities have held off from describing it as a terror attack, saying that it is too early to determine the motive.

The blast shattered the bus windows and the vehicle was burned on the right hand side.

“The bus turned on to the main road, when there was a huge noise – a big explosion,” Dortmund’s Swiss goalkeeper Roman Burki told Swiss media.

“After the bang, we all crouched down in the bus. Anyone who could, threw himself on the floor. We did not know if more would come.”

Burki said Marc Bartra was “hit by splinters of broken glass”. Dortmund’s press spokesman said the 26-year-old had broken the radius bone in his right wrist.

Dortmund said Bartra had an operation on Tuesday after “breaking the radial bone in his arm and getting bits of debris lodged in his hand”.

Dortmund’s president Reinhard Rauball said he believed the team would be ready for Wednesday’s game.

“The players will be able to push this out of their minds and be in a position to put in their usual performances,” he said.

“The worst thing would be if whoever committed this attack was now able to get to affect them through it.”

‘Lot to deal with’

But ex-Dortmund player Steffen Freund, who won the Champions League with Borussia in 1997, said there would be scars.

“When there has been a direct attack on the team bus, then it’s not just forgotten by Wednesday,” said the 47-year-old.

“Mentally and psychologically that is hard to absorb, it’s a lot to deal with.”

Dortmund police said security would be tightened at Wednesday’s match, with a major deployment of officers to “ensure that the game is played safely”.

The club said other players were safe and there was no danger inside the Signal Iduna Park stadium.

“The news that the game had to be called off was received very calmly,” Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane reported from outside the stadium.

“Many of the fans of Monaco, the opposition team, were chanting Dortmund’s name – in effect expressing their solidarity with the plight of the fans, the team and the player injured in this incident.”

Germany has been on high alert since a series of attacks last year, including the Christmas market truck assault in Berlin in December that claimed 12 lives.

Source:Al Jazeera

April 12, 2017
Somali security forces ‘rescue sailors’ from Indian ship

{Somali security forces have rescued eight sailors who were kidnapped by pirates, an official says.}

The pirates hijacked the Indian cargo ship last month, seizing the 10-man crew and holding them for ransom.

Security forces freed the vessel and two of the crew on Monday. The pirates escaped with the other eight who have now been freed, the official added.

The Al Kausar was the third ship hijacked within the space of a month after a five-year lull.

“The security forces overwhelmingly besieged them and the pirates tried to flee, but three of them were captured,” Abdirashid Mohamed Ahmed, the deputy commander of the maritime force in Somalia’s Galmudug state, told AFP news agency.

Mr Ahmed added that the newly freed crew members were “safe and healthy”. He did not reveal the sailors’ nationalities.

On Sunday sailors from the Indian, Pakistani and Chinese navies freed the crew of a Tuvalu-registered vessel which had been boarded by pirates.

Piracy in the waters off Somalia and Yemen peaked in 2011, with more than 200 attacks.

But it has dropped significantly in recent years, in part because of extensive international military patrols as well as support for local fishing communities.

However, the factors that drove many Somali coastal fishermen to become pirates nearly a decade ago are still there, says the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner.

Somalia is currently in the grip of a severe drought with hundreds of thousands facing hunger. Poverty is widespread with few employment options for young people.

There is also continued local resentment at illegal fishing off the Somali coast by Asian trawlers.

Source:BBC

April 12, 2017
Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey to return to Sierra Leone

{Pauline Cafferkey, the Scottish nurse who survived Ebola, is to return to Sierra Leone for the first time since contracting the disease there.}

She worked as a volunteer in the West African country, where an epidemic killed almost 4,000 people, in 2014.

Her return next month is to raise funds for children orphaned by the disease and people who survived it.

Ms Cafferkey, 41, who lives in Glasgow, said the trip would give her “closure in a positive way”.

She first went to Sierra Leone as part of a team of British volunteers at the Kerry Town Ebola treatment centre.

But she fell ill with the disease after arriving back in the UK in December 2014. She recovered, but had a relapse and also developed meningitis, seriously affecting her joints and ability to walk, among other issues.

She also had to face a hearing over misconduct charges, of which she was cleared.

Ms Cafferkey told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme it would be “psychologically important for me to go back”.

“That’s where things started for me and I’ve had a terrible couple of years since then, so it’d be good to go back and have things come full circle for me.

“It’ll be a little bit of closure, and I want to end it with something good, something positive.”

Now working as a health visitor support nurse in South Lanarkshire, she is returning to Sierra Leone – where Ebola has since been eradicated – to raise funds for UK charity Street Child.

It provides shelter and education for street children and orphans, and estimates that 12,000 children were orphaned in Sierra Leone by the epidemic. It also says 1,400 of those orphans remain “critically at risk” regarding their health and security.

“I’m excited to go back,” Ms Cafferkey said.

“It’ll be great to see Sierra Leone in a different state, and also know that I might be able to help as well. We weren’t allowed to travel around it last time.”

She will also meet other Ebola survivors, but said that, apart from having the virus, “what we went through was very different”.

“I had massive support from family and friends and could get medical and psychological support.

“The Ebola patients in Sierra Leone didn’t know what they were going home to, or who was left alive in their family. They might be going back to sheer hell.”

Ms Cafferkey said she now wants to return to Sierra Leone to raise money, rather than simply do fundraising in the UK, because going back is “more personal”.

Her fundraising efforts will see her run 10k as part of the marathon Street Child organises every year in Makeni, one of Sierra Leone’s largest cities, despite still having “little health issues”.

She is launching an Everyday Hero fundraising page on Wednesday, which is the International Day for Street Children, for the run.

“I’m not a runner at all. This time last year I couldn’t even run, so it’ll be a physical challenge as well as an emotional one.

“The temperature will be in the 30s and humidity will be about 90%.

“I was in training but I’ve had to take a week off because my joints are so painful. If I can’t run then I’ll just walk it.

“And if not then someone can push me round in a wheelchair.”

{{Disciplinary hearing}}

Ms Cafferkey faced misconduct charges brought by the Nursing and Midwifery Council for allegedly allowing the wrong temperature to be recorded during the screening process at Heathrow on her arrival in the UK.

But the charges were dismissed after a hearing was told she had been impaired by her illness.

A senior nurse who was found to have concealed Ms Cafferkey’s true temperature was suspended for two months, and a doctor was suspended for a month.

“I don’t hold anything against the Nursing and Midwifery Council,” Ms Cafferkey said.
“They were purely doing their job. It came at a bad time, it was a massive stress on me when I was already going through a difficult time.”

She said she had previously felt angry about facing the charges, and feels “disappointed with Public Health England and how they looked after me when I was in Heathrow”.

After first being diagnosed with Ebola, she spent almost a month in isolation at the Royal Free Hospital in London before being discharged, after apparently making a full recovery.

But in October 2015 it was discovered that Ebola was still present in her body, with health officials later confirming she had been diagnosed with meningitis caused by the virus.

In the months that followed, her health suffered and she developed problems with her thyroid, hair loss, headaches and joint pains. At various stages she has also spent time in a wheelchair, later using crutches and sticks to walk.

She said she once carried a thermometer around with her, in “paranoia” over getting a fever again, a sign of the disease.

Ms Cafferkey will be returning to Sierra Leone with two other NHS nurses who also volunteered with her, Sharon Irvine and Alison Fellowes.

They all met in that country, have since become good friends, and all three are taking part in the marathon.

“We went through everything together,” she says.

“Treating people there, me getting Ebola twice. I can’t think of anyone better to go back with. Ebola brought us together. That’s one good thing at least.”

Source:BBC

April 12, 2017
Nigeria road safety commander cut hair of female employees

{Nigeria’s road safety organisation has disciplined a senior commander after he was filmed punishing female employees by cutting off their long hair.}

Photos showing the male commander taking a pair of scissors to the women’s hair at an inspection parade sparked outrage online.

There are rules governing the hairstyles of female staff at the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC).

But a spokesman said the officer’s action was “outside” the FRSC mandate.

Lauretta Onochie, an aide to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, condemned the haircuts as a “humiliation of women” in a post on Twitter.

Andrew Kumapayi, regional commander for the FRSC in the southern Rivers State, reportedly carried out the punishment at an early-morning parade in the city of Port Harcourt on Monday.

He has not given any comment.

An official guide for female staff at FRSC parades says they must “maintain a hairstyle that can be tucked into their beret”, but does not mention a ban on long hair.

A Facebook post containing photos of the incident has now been deleted from the organisation’s official page, though the pictures have been shared thousands of times on social media.

The post said that Mr Kumapayi was carrying out a “hair, uniform and fingernails inspection” of staff.

Other officers involved in the incident had also been recalled, FRSC spokesman Bisi Kazeem told the state-run News Agency of Nigeria.

An investigation was under way and “appropriate sanctions” would be taken against those involved, he added.

Source:BBC

April 12, 2017
African migrants sold as ‘slaves’ for $200 in Libya

{African migrants trying to reach Europe are being sold into slavery in Libya, including for sex, for as little as $200, international monitors said today, citing testimony from victims.}

Having paid human traffickers in the hope of finding a better life many instead were held hostage and their families extorted for ransom.

The International Organization for Migration said “slave market conditions” and detention were increasingly common as criminal gangs sought to cash in.

“Selling human beings is becoming a trend among smugglers as the smuggling networks in Libya are becoming stronger,” Othman Belbeisi, the IOM’s chief of mission in Libya, told reporters in Geneva. “Migrants … are being sold in markets as a commodity” at a going rate of between $200 and $500 a head, he said.

While some migrants sold this way managed to escape, many wallowed in captivity for months before being bought free or sold on.

The UN agency could not provide statistics over how many people were affected, but relied on accounts provided to its staff on the ground. In one case, a Senegalese migrant identified only as S.C., told IOM staff he had been held captive for months after he made the perilous journey to Libya.

After paying a trafficker more than $300 to arrange for him to be driven through the desert, he was apparently conned when he arrived in Libya, with a truck driver saying the trafficker never paid him the money.

The driver had taken S.C. and other migrants to a parking area where a “slave market” was taking place, an IOM statement said. “Sub-Saharan migrants were being sold and bought by Libyans,” the statement said, citing staff in Niger who took the man’s testimony.

S.C. described being bought and taken to a private home where more than 100 migrants were held as hostages.

They were forced to call their families back home, and were beaten while on the phone, to try and make sure they would get the money demanded for their freedom.

“When somebody died or was released, kidnappers returned to the market to ‘buy’ more migrants to replace them,” the statement said.

“Women too were bought by private individuals …(and) were forced to be sex slaves,” it added.

An IOM staff member in Niger had spoken with a number of migrants in recent days who “all confirmed the risks of being sold as slaves in squares or garages” once in Libya, it said.

Some migrants, mainly Nigerians, Ghanaians and Gambians, were also “forced to work for the kidnappers/slave traders as guards in the ransom houses or in the ‘market’ itself,” the IOM staff member said.

One migrant, whose name was not given, told IOM he and 25 other Gambians were taken to a “prison” in Libya, and was beaten every day for nine months before his father paid for his release by selling the family home.

When he was freed he weighed just 35 kilos and was suffering from severe malnutrition and numerous torture wounds.

Source:AFP

April 12, 2017
Rise in Boko Haram child suicide bombers ‘alarming’, Unicef says

{An “alarming” number of children, most of them girls, have been used by Boko Haram as suicide bombers in the first months of 2017, Unicef said Wednesday.}

The Islamists have increasingly been using children to attack crowded markets, mosques and camps for internally displaced people in northeast Nigeria and the broader Lake Chad region.

Experts said the number of children used in suicide attacks by Boko Haram surged to 27 in the first quarter of this year, compared to nine over the same period in 2016.

Since 2014, 117 children — the “vast majority” of them girls — have been used to carry out attacks in public places across Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon, said the report by the United Nations children’s agency Unicef

Four children were used to carry out bomb attacks in 2014, 56 in 2015, 30 in 2016 and 27 in the first three months of 2017, reported Unicef.

“The increase reflects an alarming tactic by the insurgents,” said the report.

“This is the worst possible use of children in conflict,” said Marie-Pierre Poirier, Unicef’s regional director for West and Central Africa.

DETENTION

In a separate statement, Unicef said it was concerned that children were being held by the Nigerian military for alleged association with Boko Haram militants.

“They are held in military barracks, separated from their parents, without medical follow-up, without psychological support, without education, under conditions and for durations that are unknown”, said Patrick Rose, a Unicef regional coordinator.

Last year, Amnesty International warned in a May report that children were dying in the Giwa barracks detention centre in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria.

“Babies and young children have died in appalling conditions in military detention,” said the rights organisation.

On Monday, the Nigerian army released nearly 600 children, women and elderly from Giwa barracks described as a “major step” by aid agencies toward the protection and reintegration of the children back into society.

Boko Haram has been largely weakened since Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari came into power in 2015, but the Lake Chad region remains unstable with some areas still completely inaccessible.

The Boko Haram conflict has killed more than 20,000 people since 2009 and displaced more than 2.6 million from their homes.

Today the region is suffering from a severe food crisis. The UN warned Tuesday of a growing risk of mass deaths from starvation among people living in the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Nigeria.

Source:AFP

April 12, 2017
Museveni meets S.Sudan First vice president, renews call for peace

{President Museveni yesterday met South Sudan First Vice President Taban Deng Gai at Kityerera Presidential Farm in Mayuge District. }

According to a statement the president issued on his social media platforms, the meeting centred around shared areas of transport, electricity and peace in South Sudan.

In the statement, Mr Museveni also called on South Sudanese to denounce violence in the warring country.

“We held a long discussion on shared areas of transport, electricity and also the subject of peace in South Sudan. I call upon all people of South Sudan to refrain from violence. The only politically viable way is peace and dialogue to achieve development,” Mr Museveni wrote.

The meeting comes almost a week after Mr Museveni met some of South Sudan’s former political detainees led by Rebecca Nyandeng, the widow of the fallen freedom fighter Dr John Garang. After the meeting, Mr Museveni posted on his social media platforms that they discussed unitying different political groups in the world’s youngest nation.

Mr Museveni’s senior press secretary, Mr Don Wanyama told Daily Monitor then that the meeting between Mr Museveni and the G10 members was a closed door meeting and therefore no details could be availed.

However, media reports this week indicated that in the meeting, Mr Museveni rebuked the manner in which South Sudan’s affairs have been handled by its leadership, stressing that the country seceded from Sudan with collective support from the East African region.

According to media reports, a source that spoke on condition of anonymity quoted the president as saying: “Meles Zinawi (late Ethiopian prime minister) , Isaias Afwerki (Eritrean president and myself, fought and shed blood in Sudan and compelled Bashir on the table to accept self-determination and independence for the people of South Sudan and now there this claim that the Dinkas liberated South Sudan. Were we also Dinkas. What about 98.9 per cent voters in the referendum who endorsed your independence and those Americans and Europeans who supported you? Were they all Dinkas?” he asked.

Mr Museveni, in a close political ally of South Sudan President Salva Kiir. The source reportedly said the Ugandan leader was refuting a claim by a section of citizens in South Sudan, advocating views of some leaders, including President Kiir who reportedly look at him and his tribe as having played a big role in liberating South Sudan. “All of us, our people have contributed in the liberation of our country in our own different ways,” Mr Museveni is reported to have said in the meeting.

Source:Daily Monitor

April 12, 2017
Kenya:10 men sentenced to death for killing Elkana Syong’oh

{What started as an alarm by some villagers that cattle thieves had been spotted in Mwanche village in Migori County led to the lynching of three innocent men by a mob on the night of August 12, 2013.}

And now, almost four years later, a court has ruled that 10 men who were part of the mob be sent to the hangman for murder.

The events of that dark night claimed the lives of Elkana Gondi Syong’oh, a chief accountant in the Department of Defence, his driver Moses Magiri Amek and his farmhand Simon Gombe.

The three were seen at 8pm that night, mistaken for cattle rustlers and beaten up before they were set ablaze in Mr Syongoh’s vehicle.

Two were burnt beyond recognition.

{{Brutal deaths }}

Twelve people were arrested and charged following the attack. Two absconded trial and the rest were found to have played a role in the brutal killings.

David Ochieng Ajwang, Nicholas Otunga Otieno, Daniel Owino Oganyo, Julius Makambo Obade, Kennedy Kisa Omweri, Julius Otieno Deya, Janes Ogalo Oketch Olendo, Joseph Odhiambo Majiwa, Joseph Keya Omweri and Paul Koi Odeko killed the three innocent men.

Some of the suspects were found with items stolen from the slain men, according to a judgement by Justice David Majanja.

The judgement was delivered in Migori on April 5 and published by the Kenya Law Reports on Tuesday.

The verdict brings to a close a case that arose from the cruel killing of three innocent men, including Mr Syong’oh, an industrious farmer who had travelled to the area to buy quail.

Justice Majanja, after considering the evidence of 23 witnesses, concluded that there was no doubt that the 10 were at the scene of the incident and that they took part in the killings.

{{Cut hand }}

“The savage way the accused inflicted the injuries on the deceased leave no doubt that they were inflicted with intent to cause grievous harm or death,” the judge states.

Ajwang, for instance, was seen cutting the left hand of the driver with a panga.

“The driver nevertheless continued driving until he stopped the car at the junction of the main road headed to Migori.

“After the car stopped, Joseph Odhiambo began pulling the driver and passengers out of car with the help of Nicholas Otunga,” states Justice Majanja in his judgement.

The court was told that Paul Koi was spotted by villagers tying up Mr Syongoh’s farmhand with a rope before dragging him to the scene, where the others were being beaten. The farmhand had tried to escape from the scene.

Ajwang was also seen striking Mr Syong’oh on the back with a panga.

{{Gruesome killings }}

Moreover, Keya was found with two jackets stolen from the slain men days after the gruesome killings. A Chloride Exide battery that had been stolen from Mr Syong’oh’s car was also found in the home of Kennedy Kisa.

Nerbert Lubanga, the man who had sold quail to Mr Syong’oh and his two companions before they drove off only to be accosted by villagers shortly afterwards, told the court that he had escorted the men to their car and returned home.

Mr Lubanga testified that when he tried to go to the scene where the three had been waylaid to tell the residents that they were not thieves, he was beaten up.

“As someone was trying to force him to sit down, another person pushed him and he fell and rolled into the nearby bushes whereupon he fled the scene,” Justice Majanja wrote of Mr Lubanga’s testimony.

Police investigated the killings and arrested several suspects. The case opened at the High Court in Kisii before being transferred to Migori.

Because the events happened at night, the accused argued in court that no one could recognise them and pin them down as the perpetrators.

But Justice Majanja thought otherwise.

“The witnesses and accused knew each other as they were from the same village. During the incident, the witnesses had the opportunity to interact with the accused closely because they knew each other,” said the judge.

Source:Daily Nation

April 12, 2017