Category: Justice

Mali swore in a new high court on Thursday that will be charged with hearing a case of high treason against former President Amadou Toumani Toure, who was toppled in a coup in 2012, state radio and a member of parliament said.

The government brought the case before the National Assembly in December, accusing Toure of failing in his duty as commander of Mali’s armed forces to prevent foreign forces from seizing national territory.

Toure was overthrown in a March 2012 coup prompted by his failure to quell a Tuareg separatist uprising in the north. The takeover, however, allowed armed Islamist groups to seize control of the northern two-thirds of the country.

He will be tried before a new High Court of Justice, whose members were chosen by parliament.

“It has 18 members, including nine tenured judges and nine deputies. They were sworn in at the National Assembly this morning,” parliament member Mamadou Diarrassouba told Reuters.

Toure, who won power in a 2002 presidential election and was reelected five years later, is also accused of destroying military equipment and promoting army personnel to positions for which they were unqualified.

The coup, which was partly triggered by anger at government corruption and failure to equip the armed forces, occurred weeks before Toure was due to step down.

He currently resides in Dakar, the capital of neighboring Senegal.

The occupation of northern Mali by al Qaeda-linked groups ended in January 2013 when France sent more than 4,000 troops to halt a southern advance by the militants.

Mali’s new President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was elected in August by a landslide.

Mali’s ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure (L)

reuters

The UN human rights commissioner has condemned an Egyptian court’s decision to sentence to death 528 supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsy.

A spokesman for Navi Pillay said the “cursory mass trial” was “rife with procedural irregularities” and breached international human rights law.

The defendants were found guilty on Monday of charges relating to an attack on a police station in Minya in August.

Another 683 Morsy supporters went on trial at the same court on Tuesday.

They include the Muslim Brotherhood’s general guide, Mohammed Badie, and the chairman of its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), Saad al-Katatni.

Later, security forces clashed with hundreds of Minya University students protesting against the trials.

Tear gas was fired at the students after they blocked a main road, threw stones and set an armoured police vehicle on fire.

There has been widespread condemnation of Monday’s decision by the Minya Criminal Court to sentence 528 people to death for their alleged participation in an attack on a police station in the central city in mid-August, in which a police officer was killed.

The incident took place in the immediate aftermath of an operation by security forces to break up two sit-ins in the capital Cairo that left almost 1,000 people dead.

The sit-ins were set up by supporters of Mr Morsy’s after he was overthrown by the military the previous month.

The trial, at which more than three-quarters of the defendants were not present, is reported to have lasted less than an hour on Saturday.

The prosecution did not put forward evidence implicating any individual defendant, even though it had compiled significant evidence, and the court prevented defence lawyers from presenting their case or calling witnesses, according to Human Right Watch.

A second session was held on Monday solely to announce the verdict.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, told a news conference in Geneva: “The astounding number of people sentenced to death in this case is unprecedented in recent history.”

“The mass imposition of the death penalty after a trial that was rife with procedural irregularities is in breach of international human rights law.”

Sixteen Egyptian rights groups voiced concern, saying the trial constituted a “dangerous, unprecedented shift in the Egyptian’s judiciary’s treatment of such cases” and represented “a grave violation of both the right to a fair trial and the right to life”.

But Egypt’s interim government defended the court, insisting that the sentences had been handed down only “after careful study”.

The state-run al-Ahram newspaper said the court would issue its final verdict on 28 April after Egypt’s grand mufti, who under the law must ratify each death sentence before it can be carried out, had passed judgement.

The defendants may then appeal. Legal experts said a higher court would most probably order a retrial or reduce their sentences.

NMG

A court in Egypt has sentenced to death 528 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

They were convicted of charges including murdering a policeman and attacks on people and property.

The group is among over 1,200 supporters of Mr Morsi on trial, including senior Brotherhood members.

Authorities have cracked down harshly on Islamists since Mr Morsi was removed by the military in July. Hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested.

They are expected to appeal.

Campaigners say that while death sentences are often handed down in Egypt, few have been carried out in recent years.

The final trial session will not be held until 28 April. so there is some time left before the sentence is confirmed and there will be time to appeal in that period, our correspondent adds.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman in London, Abdullah el-Haddad, told the BBC the sentences showed that Egypt was now a dictatorship.

“It may be just a threat message and there will be appeals to the court and the decision of the court will change, but this is the new Egypt after the coup. This is the new dictatorship that [army chief and defence minister Field Marshal] Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is trying to establish.”

Mr Haddad said the Muslim Brotherhood’s general guide Mohammed Badie was among those convicted, though other reports say Mr Badie is only due in court on Tuesday.

In absentia
The court in Minya, south of the capital, Cairo, issued its ruling after only two sessions in which the defendants’ lawyers complained they had no chance to present their case.

Lawyers have accused the presiding judge of “veering away from all legal norms” and denying justice to the accused, our correspondent adds.

They were convicted, among other charges, of the murder of the deputy commander of the Matay district police station in Minya.

Some 147 suspects were in court for the trial – the others were convicted in absentia, reports say.

The court also acquitted 16 other defendants.

The attacks took place in August after security forces broke up two camps of pro-Morsi supporters in Cairo, killing hundreds of people.

Mr Morsi was ousted by the military last July following mass street protests against his government. He is facing four separate trials

There has since been a severe crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group, as well as on other activists seen as hostile to the military-backed interim government.

The Brotherhood has been declared a terrorist organisation and authorities have punished any public show of support for it.

A second group of 700 Morsi supporters is due to go on trial on Tuesday.

wirestory

Charles Ble Goude, wanted by the International Criminal Court in connection with a wave of violence after Ivory Coast’s 2010 elections, is in the court’s custody and is on his way to its jail in The Hague, the court said on Saturday.

The Ivory Coast government said on Thursday that it would hand over Ble Goude, a close ally of former president Laurent Gbagbo, who is already in detention in The Hague awaiting trial on similar crimes against humanity charges.

The court’s prosecutors accuse Ble Goude of helping orchestrate the wave of violence in 2010, which they say Gbagbo unleashed in order to avoid relinquishing his grip on power after losing elections.

Charles Ble Goude, minister of youth and employment in Ivory Coast’s incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo’s government, speaks during a rally with youths in Yopougon, Abidjan December 29, 2010.