{"id":8327,"date":"2013-06-07T16:14:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T16:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/zambia-s-ex-president-can-t-leave-country\/"},"modified":"2013-06-07T16:13:19","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T16:13:19","slug":"zambia-s-ex-president-can-t-leave-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/zambia-s-ex-president-can-t-leave-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Zambia&#8217;s ex-president Can&#8217;t Leave Country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zambia&#8217;s ex-president Rupiah Banda has been blocked from leaving the country but said he was unfazed by his &#8220;persecution&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Zambian immigration authorities on Friday prevented the 76-year-old from leaving the country for the third time in nearly two months, sparking widespread criticism from activists.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, no I am not heart broken by these persecutions and I have to be strong,&#8221; Banda media.<\/p>\n<p>Banda, who is fighting corruption charges, was stopped from boarding a flight to South Africa despite a High Court order releasing his passport.<\/p>\n<p>A raft of criminal charges were brought against him by his successor&#8217;s administration led by Michael Sata which took office in September 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Banda was stripped of diplomatic immunity in February and has been appearing in court on several corruption charges.<\/p>\n<p>Banda, who has been accused of misappropriating more than $11m during his three years in office, was arrested and then later released on a bond, said Namukolo Kasumpa, a spokeswoman for the government&#8217;s investigation team after Banda&#8217;s diplomatic immunity was revoked.<\/p>\n<p>He has maintained that the charges are politically motivated.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At least I am happy that when I was president I did not do this to anybody,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If I had done something like that my conscience would not be clear.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-2893 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/mn-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>aljazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zambia&#8217;s ex-president Rupiah Banda has been blocked from leaving the country but said he was unfazed by his &#8220;persecution&#8221;. Zambian immigration authorities on Friday prevented the 76-year-old from leaving the country for the third time in nearly two months, sparking widespread criticism from activists. &#8220;No, no I am not heart broken by these persecutions and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","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":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","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":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8327","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8327"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8327"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}