{"id":24220,"date":"2016-03-29T02:03:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T02:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/angola-jails-17-activists-for-anti-government\/"},"modified":"2016-03-29T02:02:56","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T02:02:56","slug":"angola-jails-17-activists-for-anti-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/angola-jails-17-activists-for-anti-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Angola jails 17 activists for anti-government rebellion"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Court sentences 17 activists in trial the opposition says proves the existence of ingrained political repression.}<\/p>\n

An Angolan court has sentenced 17 youth activists, including a prominent rapper, to between two and eight years in jail for rebelling against the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.<\/p>\n

The sentence was handed down on Monday at the end of a lengthy trial in the capital Luanda that the Angolan opposition has said proves the existence of ingrained political repression.<\/p>\n

The activists were arrested in June and have always denied the charges against them.<\/p>\n

Rapper Luaty Beirao, who went on hunger strike for over a month last year to protest his detention, was given a five-and-a-half year sentence for “rebellion against the president of the republic, criminal association and falsifying documents”.<\/p>\n

Another activist, Domingos da Cruz, who was identified by the judge as the “leader” of the group, was handed eight-and-a-half years for planning a coup and for criminal association.<\/p>\n

The defendants were calm as the sentences were read out before being taken away to jail at the judge’s orders.<\/p>\n

The activists insist they are peaceful campaigners for the departure of dos Santos, who has ruled the former Portuguese colony since 1979 and is Africa’s second longest-serving leader.<\/p>\n

Michel Francisco, a lawyer representing 10 of the accused, said he would appeal.<\/p>\n

“Justice has not been done in a transparent way because things have been politicised and the judge only obeyed higher orders coming from the president of the republic,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n

Rights groups say activists in Angola, Africa’s second-largest oil producer and third biggest economy, are being increasingly targeted by the government of dos Santos.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International has previously said the activists should have not been arrested in the first place and described their detention as a “travesty of justice”.<\/p>\n

Earlier in March, dos Santos said he would step down in 2018 but the announcement was received with scepticism following two similar pledges in the past.<\/p>\n

His current mandate ends at the end of next year.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Court sentences 17 activists in trial the opposition says proves the existence of ingrained political repression.} An Angolan court has sentenced 17 youth activists, including a prominent rapper, to between two and eight years in jail for rebelling against the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The sentence was handed down on Monday at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24220"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24220"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}