Category: Justice

{{State prosecutor Gerrie Nel: Oscar Pistorius ”did not suffer from a mental illness or defect” at the time of the shooting}}

Oscar Pistorius did not have a mental disorder when he killed his girlfriend, a psychological report said as his murder trial resumed.

This means the Olympic athlete was criminally responsible for his actions when he shot her, the prosecution said.

The defence team has said Mr Pistorius was suffering from an anxiety disorder.

The athlete denies deliberately killing Reeva Steenkamp. He says he shot her accidentally in a state of panic after mistaking her for an intruder.

The prosecution says Mr Pistorius deliberately killed Ms Steenkamp following an argument.

Both prosecution and defence have accepted the results of the psychological report.

{{Three Al Jazeera journalists were sentenced to seven years in jail by an Egyptian judge on Monday for aiding a “terrorist organization”, drawing criticism from Western governments who said the verdict undermined freedom of expression.}}

The three, who all denied the charge of working with the now banned Muslim Brotherhood, included Australian Peter Greste and Canadian-Egyptian national Mohamed Fahmy, Cairo bureau chief of Al Jazeera English.

The third defendant, Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed, was given an extra three years for possessing a single bullet at the hearing attended by Western diplomats, some of whose governments summoned Egypt’s ambassadors over the case.

The men have been held at Egypt’s notorious Tora Prison for six months, with the case becoming a rallying point for rights groups and news organsiations around the world.

They were detained in late December and charged with helping “a terrorist group” – a reference to the Muslim brotherhood – by broadcasting lies that harmed national security and supplying money, equipment and information to a group of Egyptians.

The Brotherhood was banned and declared a terrorist group after the army deposed elected Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in July following mass protests against his rule. The Brotherhood says it is a peaceful organisation.

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{{Nigeria will recover $228 million of funds looted by former military dictator Sani Abacha, the finance ministry said on Thursday, after a 16-year battle to retrieve the stolen money from Liechtenstein.}}

For years, Abuja’s efforts to get the money back had been stymied by a lawsuit from companies linked to Abacha’s family, alleging infringement of their rights to a fair trial.

Nigeria’s finance minister last year accused Liechtenstein of using legal challenges as a pretext to keep the money stolen by Abacha, who died in 1998.

The dictator stole as much as $5 billion of public money during his five years running Africa’s top oil producer from 1993 to 1998, Transparency International says.

“We can confirm that Nigeria will on June 25, 2014, receive the sum of euro 167 million from the government of the Principality of Liechtenstein, part of looted funds recovered from the Abacha family,” the ministry said in a statement.

The finance ministry had said it was seeking to repatriate 185 million euros ($252 million) of stolen funds. It was not immediately clear if it would repatriate 18 million later on.

Nigeria said it had dropped the case against the Abachas as part of a deal to recover the money and, in turn, the dictator’s family agreed to drop its human rights suit.

Nigeria will invest the money in projects picked by a committee of ministers and monitored by the World Bank. Some of it will go into a fund on behalf of future generations.

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{{ Sudanese jailers removed the chains from a Christian woman, sentenced to death for apostasy, after she gave birth in prison last month, one of her lawyers said Tuesday.}}

The case of Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag sparked an outcry from Western governments and rights groups after a judge sentenced her on May 15 to hang.

Born to a Muslim father, she was convicted under Islamic sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983 and outlaws conversions on pain of death.

Twelve days after the verdict, Ishag gave birth to a daughter at the women’s prison in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman.

“They removed the chains” after she delivered, one of her lawyers, Mohanad Mustafa, told reporters.

“This is on order by the doctor.”

Sudanese law requires anyone sentenced to death to be shackled but Mustafa said he did not think they would be put back on again.

After the delivery, Ishag was moved to the prison clinic from a cell she shared with other women.

“After she gave birth the conditions got better,” Mustafa said.

“She has air conditioning. She has a good bed,” he said after he and Ishag’s Catholic husband, Daniel Wani, visited her.

“She’s fine. Usually her husband brings the food, and he gives her money” to buy any other items she needs.

The couple’s 20-month-old son is also incarcerated with Ishag and their daughter.

Mustafa said that despite the relative improvement in Ishag’s conditions, “a prison is a prison.”

Last week, European Union leaders called for revocation of the “inhumane verdict,” while US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Khartoum to repeal its laws banning Muslims from converting.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the way she has been treated “is barbaric and has no place in today’s world.”

Mustafa and four other human rights lawyers handling her case for free have appealed the verdict.

“We’re still waiting,” and there is no word on when the higher court’s decision may come, Mustafa said.

{{ ‘Never a Muslim’ }}

A church source was optimistic Ishag would be freed because of international pressure on Sudan.

“I am hopeful that she will be released,” said the source, asking for anonymity.

But Muslim extremist groups have been lobbying the Islamist government over Ishag’s case, prominent newspaper editor Khalid Tigani has said.

Ishag, born in eastern Sudan’s Gedaref state on November 3, 1987, is the daughter of a Sudanese Muslim father and an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian mother, a statement obtained by media on Tuesday from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum says.

Her father abandoned the family when Ishag was five, and she was raised according to her mother’s faith, it says.

“She has never been a Muslim in her life,” said the statement signed by Father Mussa Timothy Kacho, episcopal vicar for Khartoum.

Ishag joined the Catholic church shortly before she married the Khartoum-born Wani in December 2011, the vicar said.

Wani is a United States citizen, the US embassy confirmed to AFP on Tuesday.

The case against Ishag dates from 2013 when “a group of men who claim to be Meriam’s relatives” filed an initial legal action, the vicar’s statement said.

In fact, she had never seen those men before, the statement added, in comments confirmed by the lawyer Mustafa.

Ishag and her husband own a barber shop, a mini-mart and an agricultural project in Gedaref, the vicar said.

Mustafa did not know if there is a link between the businesses and the case against Ishag but he said: “Surely there is something behind this”.

The Ishag case is the latest problem facing Sudan, an impoverished nation battling rebellions in its west and south, while more than six million people need humanitarian aid.