Tag: GreatLakesNews

{This comes days after one of the defence lawyers protested the intended fresh charging of 16 out of 32 suspects.}

The Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Mike Chibita has dropped charges against 17 out of the 32 Muslim clerics accused of being behind a wave of killing of top Muslim clerics across the country about two years ago.

In the ongoing pre-trial, the DPP also dropped the charges from six to four despite a protest from one of the defence lawyers.

Mr Twaha Mayanja, one of the defence lawyers, last month protested the intended fresh charging of 17 out of 32 suspects after it emerged that the DPP was planning to secretly charge half of the number of the suspects.

According to the indictment before the International Crimes Division of the High Court, the suspects are currently facing four charges ranging from murder, attempted murder, crimes and terrorism.

The DPP dropped charges of aid and rendering support, and crimes against humanity.
Mr Lino Anguzu and Mr Thomas Jatiko who represented the DPP on Monday presented to the trial judge aNolle prosequi (declaration made to the judge meaning the case against the defendant is being dropped) and added that they have 116 witness statements to pin the remaining 15 suspects including Sheikh Yunus Kamoga.

Those whose charges were dropped are; Mzamil Kasawulira, Serunjogi Arafat alias Bukenya, Badru Bukenya, Alext Okot, Joseph Olanya, Aisha Nakasibante, Charles Okidi, Pte Rajab Mubaje alias Magombe Sulaiman, Issa Matanda alias Charles, Byamukama Abdulratif alias Tusiime, Ssemwogerere Asadu and Solomon Kibirige.

Others are Safiyi Wadwali alias Swafi Shafi, Yusuf Sentamu alias Kasibante, Muhamadi Kalodo alias Kasibante, Ismail Ssentongo and Robert Bampikye.

However, those facing fresh charges include; Sheikh Muhamad Yunus Kamoga, Sheikh Siraj Kawooya, Sekayanja Abdulsalaam alias Kassim Mulumba, Sematimba Abdulhamid Mubiru, Jingo Rashid, Sekito Twaha, Kakande Yusuf alias Abdallah and Sheikh Murta Mudde Bukenya.

Others are Hakim Kinene Muswaswa, Amir Kinene, Sheikh Kalungi Fahad, Hamuza Kasirye, Musa Issa Mubiru and Iga George William alias Hamuza.

Prosecution alleges that Sheikh Kamoga, the leader of Tabliq sect and his co-accused, directed systematic attacks against Shia and Tabliq Muslims, leaving many dead, including Sheikh Mustafa Bahiga at Bwebajja who was gunned down along Entebbe Road, Sheikh Abdulkadir Muwaya, who was killed in Mayuge District, and Sheikh Hassan Kirya, who was shot at and killed in Bweyogerere, Waksio District.

{A surge in the number of students being arrested on suspicion of joining the Islamic State (Isis) has triggered alarm on the group’s recruitment efforts in the country.}

The Commission of University Education says at least 44 university students have abandoned their studies to join terror groups including Isis in Libya and Al-Shabaab in Somalia.

Concern is especially growing over the number of students studying medicine who have been detained on suspicion of belonging to terror groups.

On Wednesday, the US government froze the assets of Somali resident Abduqadir Mumin, who it identified as the leader of the Islamic State in East Africa and warned its citizens against conducting any business with him.

“Mumin, a former Al-Shabaab recruiter and spokesman, pledged allegiance to Isis, along with around 20 of his followers, in October 2015. And has set up a base in Puntland, Somalia,” said the US State Department.

“Since then, Mumin has expanded his cell of Isis supporters by kidnapping young boys aged 10 to 15, indoctrinating them, and forcing them to take up militant activity,” it added.

Unlike Shabaab, which recruits directly, Isis increases its membership through the creation of franchises or raiding other terror groups for members by convincing their terror cells to join them.

It is believed Mumin’s cell – which calls itself “Jahba East Africa” – is behind the massive recruitment drive for the Islamic State in East Africa.

Al-Shabaab, which is believed to have been weakened significantly due to wrangles among its leadership and a sustained campaign against it by the African Union mission (Amisom), pledges its allegiance to Al-Qaeda, a fierce rival to the Islamic State.

Apart from the El-Adde base attack in which dozens of Kenya Defence Forces soldiers were killed after Shabaab militants raided their camp in Somalia, the militant group, which has killed hundreds of Kenyans in recent years, has not staged a major attack in Kenya this year.

The number of terror attacks on Kenyan soil dropped to 46 last year, 49 per cent lower than the figure for 2014 and the lowest since 201, according to statistics collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which is run by the University of Sussex in the UK.

{{STUDENTS APPREHENDED}}

The university, which compiles data drawn from media reports on terrorist attacks around the world, says Kenya has had 13 militant attacks carried out within its territory so far since January, leading to 34 causalities.

Last year saw 94 attacks while 2013 and 2012 had 48 and 52 attacks respectively.

Security experts say while Isis has no reason to attack Kenya, the reported recruitment drive is a cause for worry.

“We have not reached a level where he have an active Isis threat in Kenya because what we have is people willing to join the terror group or sympathetic to them,” Major (Rtd) Bashir Abdullahi, a security analyst says.

“But if it is about having people who subscribe to their cause within Kenya that is a cause for worry because we do have them,” he says.

But more worrying is the fact that those being arrested on suspicion of being members of the terror group are in the medical field.

On Monday, two interns at the Malindi Hospital, Mohamed Shukri and Abdulrazak Abdinuur, were arrested by officers from the Anti-Terror Police Unit (ATPU) on suspicion of having links to the group.

Both are studying medicine at Saratov State Medical University in Russia courtesy of a scholarship from the Russian government.

Last year, four other medical interns at the same hospital were arrested for allegedly planning to join Isis.

The four Maryam Said, Khadija Abdulkadir, Ummul Khayr (all Kenyans) and Sadir Abdalla from Tanzania were presented to court and their cases are ongoing.

In February, ATPU arrested Hassanaen Ahmed, a University of Nairobi biochemistry student as he was leaving the country to travel to Libya reportedly to join Isis.

In May, Gloria Kavaya, a microbiology student at the Kenyatta University was arrested after she disappeared from school, changed her name and embarked on plans to travel to Syria, according to the prosecution.

During the same month, police said they had foiled a large scale biological attack using anthrax on a scale similar to the Westgate attack.

Mohamed Abdi, a medical intern at the Wote Hospital in Makueni and a student at the Kampala International University was among three suspects arrested.

His wife Nuseiba Mohammed – whom police identified as an accomplice and student at Kampala International University – was arrested a few days later by Ugandan Police as she tried to flee the country together with another Kenyan female student Fatuma Hanshi, according to the police.

The two were handed over to the Kenyan government for prosecution.

Their alleged accomplices in the foiled anthrax attack Ahmed Hish and Farah Dagane, both medical interns at Kitale hospital, have a Sh2 million bounty on them.

“The same network has been facilitating Kenyan youth to secretly leave the country to join terror groups in Libya and Syria,” said police Inspector General Joseph Boinnet.

{{BRIGHT MINDS}}

So, what is it that is making practitioners in the medical field get attracted to terror groups?

The Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board (KMPDB), which regulates the practice of medicine in the country, has refused to be drawn into the debate saying it is not part of their mandate.

“This is something we don’t want to get involved in because it is not a medical malpractice, it’s a security issue,” Daniel Yumbya KMPDB chief executive says.

Medicine is regarded as a prestigious career attracting the brightest students in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams.

Psychologist Philomena Ndambuki from the Kenyatta University says like all terror recruits, those joining Isis are driven by a desire to belong to something, an idea Isis uses to draw disillusioned youth around the world into its ranks through social media.

“Doctors are driven by altruism and a desire to help others, which terrorist recruiters can exploit by promising potential recruits they will be serving a bigger cause,” says Dr Ndambuki.

A widely circulated tweet by the Islamic State’s British recruiter Omar Hussain says: “The wage here may not be as much as you get in the West, but do we live for this life or do we live for the hereafter? Is money more important than the life of your Muslim brother?”

It is such messages that Dr Ndambuki believes turn bright minds into terrorists through a process she calls warped idealism.

But it is not just Isis. The leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took over from Osama Bin Laden (who was an engineer) is an eye surgeon from Egypt.

One of the founding leaders of the armed Palestinian liberation group, Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi was a paediatrician.

After his death in 2004 he was replaced by Mahnmoud al-Zahar, a surgeon, while Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Isis, has a PhD in Islamic studies.

And since June last year, Isis has been running a campaign calling for foreign professionals like health workers and engineers through blogs, social media, magazines and online videos to join its ranks as locals continue to flee areas where it controls.

So huge has been the influx of professionals in joining Isis from other countries that the UK had to send a delegation including an Imam early this year to Khartoum’s University of Medical Sciences and Technology after 17 British doctors at the institution travelled to Syria.

{For Oyam Woman MP Sandra Santa Alum, the closest she had ever brushed with the Grim Reaper was hearing alarm bells warning that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels were in the vicinity, a clarion call that would see her flee for dear life.}

For Oyam Woman MP Sandra Santa Alum, the closest she had ever brushed with the Grim Reaper was hearing alarm bells warning that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels were in the vicinity, a clarion call that would see her flee for dear life.

That was until the evening of Thursday, August 25 at KariBou-Inn Guest House, Johannesburg, South Africa, when she was put at gunpoint by a bulky man, confronting death face–to-face.
Ms Alum had travelled with three MPs and four Parliament staff to South Africa for a bench-marking study on a farm with the Agriculture committee, when they were attacked just as they made way into the hotel.

{{The surprise attack}}

“We would expect them [the LRA rebels]. We would hear that the rebels are coming and we would start running. But this was unexpected. I had never been put at gun-point,” a distraught Alum narrates.
The ride from the airport to the KariBou-Inn Guest House was largely uneventful, save for a 10-minute wait for the driver who had been booked by the committee. But hell broke loose just as they were disembarking from the car. The delay by the driver, which seemed innocuous at the time, is now suspicious.

“When we reached the hotel, no sooner had we opened the doors than the driver was like: You people, close your eyes, raise your arms [or] they will kill you. These men started taking whatever they wanted,” Ms Alum recounts.

The armed men then helped themselves with most of the personal effects of the delegation; bags, passports, documents, name it. Her bag had 20.000 South African Rands (about Shs4.7 million).

Other MPs on the delegation were Mr Francis Barnabas Gonahasa (Kabweri County), Mr Kenneth Esiangu Eitunganane (Soroti County) and Mr Robert Ndugwa Migadde (Buvuma County). But Ms Alum had remained with one valuable; her wedding ring. It was regrettably still ringed on her fingers, triggering the wrath of one of the gangsters. That’s the last time she saw her wedding ring.

“When he saw the ring after picking my bag, I rested my arms on my laps. He said: bring bring, they grabbed. They took even the wedding ring,” Ms Alum says, gesticulating how the ring was removed from her finger.

With most of the MPs robbed of the phones, staff that had somehow managed to keep their phones from the robbers reached out to the Ugandan Embassy that helped in processing travel documents for them to head back to Uganda.

MP Migadde, the vice chairperson of the Agriculture Committee, will make a personal statement on the matter in the House.

The background

The lawmakers were headed to Durban, about 630km away from Johannesburg, to visit the Amandla Fertiliser production facility and Parliament picked all their bills.
A source that declined to be named due to sensitivity of the matter claimed that the lawmakers likely picked the guest house because accommodation there is relatively cheaper and would enable them save money.
An MP gets $520 (Shs1.7 million) as daily allowance when on foreign trips. Rooms at the guest house on average cost about Shs150,000-300,000.

{President John Magufuli has constituted the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security for observation of the 2016 National Assembly Elections in the Republic of the Seychelles.}

A speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Dr Augustine Mahiga, made available from Victoria, Seychelles yesterday, pointed out that President Magufuli who is Chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security mandated the executive secretary of SADC to prepare the logistics for its deployment.

“I am pleased to inform you that the SADC Electoral Observation Mission to the 2016 National Assembly Elections is now fully constituted and comprises 19 observers from eight SADC member states.

We also urge all political parties to adhere and accept the results of the elections and lodge their complaints and grievances through the relevant institutions.

“As the voting days of the 8-10 September, 2016 approaches …the outcome of this election lies in the hands of the people of the Republic of the Seychelles,” said Dr Mahiga who represented Dr Magufuli.

He noted that the mission in Seychelles was at the invitation of the Electoral Commission of the Republic of the Seychelles and that the practice is now part of democratic culture and tradition in the SADC region.

Minister Mahiga said a substantial amount of effort has already been invested in the preparations for the important mission, beginning with the ground work undertaken by the SADC Secretariat, the SADC Electoral Advisory Council Goodwill Mission, the Troika and other stakeholders, to ensure the realisation of the objectives and mandate of the observation mission.

Over the last two decades, SADC has developed and enhanced its normative frameworks governing democratic elections which have contributed to its endeavour as a region to work toward the realisation of the vision of the SADC Treaty of 1992.

On 20th July, 2015, the Ministerial Committee of the Organ adopted the revised SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, which aim to strengthen their skills and capabilities of assessing the major inter-related segments of the electoral cycle in order to provide stronger evidence-based recommendations and electoral assistance to member states.

The SADC Electoral Advisory Council Goodwill Mission arrived in the Seychelles on 22 August, 2016 ahead of the main Short Term Electoral Observation Mission of the SADC Electoral Observation Mission, signifying the enhanced approach to election observation, which will eventually build their capacity to develop and sustain Long Term Election Observation (LTO) missions.

The Seychelles is an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, off East Africa that got independence from the United Kingdom on 29th June 1976

{African Union facilitator Edem Kodjo (left) addresses the meeting of the preparatory committee to the national dialogue in the Democratic Repiblic of the Congo (DRC). }

2 September 2016 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has taken note of yesterday’s launch of the national dialogue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and urged more inclusive process towards elections, his spokesman said today.

“He remains convinced that only an inclusive political dialogue will help pave the way towards peaceful and credible elections, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 2277 (2016),” Mr. Ban’s spokesman added in a statement.

The Secretary-General urged the political groups that have not yet joined the dialogue process to “play a constructive role which contributes to the holding of timely and credible elections,” the spokesman said.

Furthermore, the Secretary-General encouraged the Government to continue confidence-building measures and to uphold the fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, the spokesman said.

Mr. Ban also urged all actors to refrain from any action that could increase tensions or lead to violence, the spokesman added.

{The Lira Resident District Commissioner has appealed to President Museveni to fight corruption in public institutions starting with the Office of the Presidency.}

The Lira Resident District Commissioner has appealed to President Museveni to fight corruption in public institutions starting with the Office of the Presidency.

Mr Emmanuel Mwaka Lutukumoi said Mr Museveni should use his 1986’s AK-47 gun to fight yet another war – corruption – if Vision 2040 is to be achieved.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, the RDC said there was injustice in the office of the Resident District Commissioners that needed to be addressed by the President.

The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) report; Letting the big fish swim: failure to prosecute high-level corruption in Uganda, described corruption in the country as “severe, well-known” and something that “cuts across many sectors”.

“We live in a rotten country; rotten districts, rotten offices, with rotten people. We have lost the moral sense of shame. Corruption has invaded all public institutions,” Mr Lutukumoi said, adding that children were no longer accessing quality education because of corruption.

“People are not accessing quality healthcare, some are dying in hospitals, roads are in sorry state because of corruption,” he said.

Mr Lutukumoi also said RDCs, including himself, are failing to perform because of poor facilitation such as lack of transport and office equipment.

He claimed he has been monitoring government projects and programmes in 13 sub-counties that make up Lira District on a boda boda.

President Museveni, while addressing RDCs and their deputies as well as security personnel at the end in Kyankwanzi in April 2014, admitted corruption had remained a problem.

“The problem is corruption and negligence by you people…It is you people who cause corruption. When a representative of the President becomes useless, then the system is in trouble,” Mr Museveni said.

“Once you investigate a case, do it thoroughly and act. The thieves will run away if they know there are consequences,” he added.