Tag: GreatLakesNews

{The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldiers have killed 21 Al-Shabaab militants in a shootout in Lower Juba Region in Somalia and recovered weapons.}

Two KDF soldiers also died in the shootout on Saturday afternoon.

The KDF also recovered 19 AK-47 rifles, three rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and a pistol.

The KDF spokesman Col David Obonyo said that a convoy of KDF soldiers operating under the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) were on their way to Afmadow when they engaged Al-Shabaab militants who had laid an ambush in the Lower Juba Region.

“Regrettably, KDF suffered two fatalities and five injuries,” Col Obonyo said.

During the fierce engagement, Col Obonyo said, the overpowered Al-Shabaab militants resorted to the use of improvised explosive devices (IED), damaging one of the KDF vehicles.

Five soldiers were injured and were evacuated.

SOLDIERS EVACUATED

“The injured were evacuated and [are] receiving medical attention,” he said.

On Wednesday last week, the KDF also killed 19 Al-Shabaab militants in Afmadow.

The KDF personnel recovered a vehicle, 10 AK-47 rifles and three RPGs.

The militants are said to have planned to attack a camp occupied by the Amisom and Somali National Army (SNA) troops in Afmadow, Lower Juba Region.

“The Al-Shabaab terrorists had approached the camp at night with the intention to attack and cut off the SNA from Amisom (KDF) camp.

“KDF soldiers on patrol identified the militants and engaged them in a fierce battle,” Col Obonyo said.

Last Wednesday’s shooting came just two weeks after a US drone strike killed more than 150 Al-Shabaab militants at a training camp where a large scale attack was being planned.

“We know they were going to be departing the camp and they posed an imminent threat to US and [African Union] forces,” spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

{Inmates serving prison sentences in the country are eligible for parole provided they meet the requirements, since it is not a privilege for high profile individuals only as some people prefer to suggest.}

“I sincerely encourage that inmates should apply for parole as their basic right provided they meet the requirements, since it is a way of decongesting the prisons which are currently overcrowded,” the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Charles Kitwanga told the ‘Daily News’ recently.

The minister also said that for inmates who feel that they have been already transformed after serving some of their prison terms and feel that they can do community service instead should not hesitate to apply for parole.

However, he said that no matter how petty the crime is, still the law enforcement organs cannot ignore such crimes. “There are two ways of being given parole, one is through the Commissioner General of Prisons and the other is through the courts of law,” he said.

He said that in the case of Mramba and Yona (former politicians who were jailed), they had applied by filing an application to the courts which had sentenced them. He expounded further that the court upon receiving the application assesses and communicates with the prison and if they establish that such a person qualifies and has been behaving well, the court has the discretion to grant the parole.

On the other hand, he said, there is also an option of applying to the Commissioner General of Prisons who will assess and send recommendations to the Ministry of Home Affairs. If it is proved that the inmate is no longer a threat to the community, the convict is given a chance to do community service, he said.

“The law has to apply no matter how petty the crime is,” he said. On the issue of parole granted to inmates, he refuted claims that it was only high profile politicians who enjoyed this privilege.

“In Dar es Salaam Region there are more than 200 people who have been covered by the parole exercise,” he explained. He said that it was unfortunate that if politicians are granted parole, they receive a lot of publicity from the media.

“Because these politicians are prominent they are in the spotlight since they are high profile individuals,” he said. However, he said there are many people who are granted parole upon submitting their applications, but are not covered by the media. He explained that the former politicians are sick and qualify for the parole which was granted to them.

“They are above 70 years and the regulation that grant parole are very clear,” he said. He said that they had also stayed in prison and because they behaved well it was justified for them to be granted parole.

“It is very unfortunate that they happened to be politicians and the public perception was negative about them,” he said. The minister further clarified that the two were granted parole by a court order. But he also clarified that parole was not only a strategy of decongesting prisons.

“Assuming that prisons are not congested still a person can apply for parole,” said the minister. Meanwhile, the Ministry and Panel Reform International, a worldwide NGO based in London, have recently exchanged ideas and experiences on the issue of security and how the country can remain peaceful. Mr Kitwanga said that the discussions were centred on security and how the country can remain peaceful.

“It is how Tanzanians and everyone in the country can remain peaceful and enjoy the peace that existed since we got independence,” he explained. The minister said the reason why the talks centred on peace and tranquility is because such situation stops prevailing when there is violation of the laws of the country.

He said that such violations then call for either penalties which could be in form of fines or imprisonment. He said that Panel Reform International was equally interested in security and peace of the country as it is an improvement of prison systems.

“Both are within the same perimeters of peace, because whoever is breaking the law he or she has the intention of disrupting peace,” he argued. He said that the proper way of handling such a person is to send him or her for rehabilitation so that they can be reformed.

“First of all there is a need to have specialists in prisons, however there is still shortage of such experts,” he said.

{Soldiers in Democratic Republic of Congo’s army have taken part in at least three deadly attacks on civilians and turned a blind eye to other assaults carried out by rebels, a former U.N. investigator said in a report released on Friday.}

Spokesmen for Congo’s government and army did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations by the Congo Research Group at New York University, headed by Jason Stearns.

More than 500 people have died in a wave of machete attacks and other raids in Congo’s east since Oct. 2014, rights groups say.

The government has blamed most of them on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan Islamist group that has operated in eastern Congo since the 1990s.

But Stearns said witnesses and other evidence showed soldiers had participated in at least three attacks near the town of Beni between Oct. 2014 and March 2015.

“We have collected matching testimonies on the involvement of (army) soldiers in certain massacres and also several general testimonies of (army) officers that confirm this complicity,” the report said.

The soldiers’ motives were not clear, the report added, but it said there was evidence of past collaboration between army officers and the ADF in timber trafficking. Ethnic rivalries could also be involved in some cases, it said.

Two colonels were convicted by a military court in Nov. 2014 in connection with the assassination of the commander of operations against the ADF near Beni earlier that year.

Millions died between 1996 and 2003 in regional conflicts in Congo’s east, mostly from hunger and disease. Dozens of armed groups continue to prey upon the local population and exploit the area’s natural resources.

The report said the repeated failure by army units, sometimes stationed close to the attack, to respond promptly suggested some officers had given orders not to intervene.

The failure to respond to attacks was noted by a parliamentary mission report in Nov. 2014 and a report by the current U.N. panel of experts in Congo last year.

“If you ask questions to understand why, they whip you,” one noncommissioned officer told researchers about orders not to intervene.

Stearns is a former coordinator of the U.N. panel of experts in Congo.

{A stray lion spotted on Mombasa Road on Friday morning was driven back to the Nairobi National Park two and a half hours later, as a man it had injured was taken to hospital.}

The elderly man was clawed by the lion as it wandered on the busy highway early in the morning, sending panic among Nairobi residents.

The Kenya Wildlife Service communication spokesperson, Mr Paul Udoto, said the 63-year-old man was in a stable condition at The Mater Hospital, in nearby South B Estate.

“The lion may have been disturbed by the commotion at a construction site inside the park and made its way out,” said Mr Udoto. “It was provoked by people hooting and taking pictures.”

KWS sent three units to hunt down the lion after it was spotted at around 7am.

“There is still a unit on the ground trying to see if there is another, or other, stray lions,” Mr Udoto added. “We urge the public to report to the police or KWS if they see them.”

This is the fourth time in less than a month that lions and lionesses have been spotted outside the national park, which is adjacent to the city.

The big cats have on two occasions mauled domestic animals from nearby residential areas.

In the first incident when three lionesses strayed, KWS, through its head of communications, said the big cats were protecting their cubs by moving them out of the pride in the park.

Two days later, a man reported at the Lang’ata Police Station that two lions had mauled his three goats at a neighbouring estate. On Wednesday night, another flock was killed by lions in in the same area.

Mr Udoto said there were about 35 lions in the park.

“I cannot tell you the exact figure because KWS cannot ascertain the population of wild animals that freely move in the 117-square kilometre park,” he said. “It is hard to conduct a headcount of animals in the entire park without making errors.”

The KWS assistant director in charge of the southern conservation area, Mr Julius Cheptei, said it is common for wild animals to move from one place to another.

He cited population increase in Nairobi that has seen people settle on areas that were traditionally wildlife dispersal areas as one of the main reasons for the human-wildlife conflict.

Mr Cheptei advised people not to crowd, make noise or throw objects at wild animals in the event they spot them out of the sanctuary.

He said increased construction activities near the park had blocked animal migration routes.

{The Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court in Dar es Salaam yesterday sentenced two Chinese to 35 years in jail each for illegal possession of elephant tusks valued at over 5bn/- and corrupt transactions.}

The court had given Huang Gin (53) and Xu Fujie (25) an option to pay a total fine of 108bn/-. However, the duo failed to raise the said amount and had to go to jail. Senior Resident Magistrate Cyprian Mkeha imposed the sentence after convicting the duo of two offences they were facing before the court.

The magistrate took into consideration the evidence produced by nine prosecution witnesses, who were summoned to prove the charges against the convicts. Principal State Attorney Faraja Nchimbi, assisted by State Attorneys Paul Kadushi, Wankyo Simon and Salim Msemo, led the prosecutions team in the case. They had requested the court to severely punish the convicts considering the seriousness of the offence committed.

The prosecution gave provoking mitigation factors, revealing that the statistics show that a total of 892 live elephants have so far been killed and the amount of tusks the convicts were found with were 210, which is equivalent to 25 per cent of elephants killed.

Such large number of killed elephants, according to the prosecution, has an adverse effect to the tourism sector and, thus affecting the country’s economy in general. The prosecution, therefore, requested the court to show no mercy at all to the convicts.

On their part, the convicts, through their advocate Nehemia Nkonko requested the court to provide them with lenient sentence because it was the first time to be convicted with a criminal offence and that they have been in remand for so long.

The magistrate, having considered the nature of the offence committed and mitigation factors sentenced each accused to pay fine ten times the market value of the tusks involved or go to jail 30 years in default of paying the fine.

He also sentenced the convicts to five year imprisonment for attempting to bribe the police officers 30m/- who had gone to arrest them in connection with the offences. The two had been charged jointly with another Chinese, Chen Jinzhan (34), who was acquitted after the prosecution failed to establish prima facie case against him. It was alleged that the accused persons committed the offence on November 2, 2013, at Kifaru Street, Mikocheni B in Kinondoni District in the city.

The prosecution told the court that jointly and together, the accused persons were found in unlawful possession of 706 pieces of elephant tusks weighing 1,889kg valued at 5,435,865,000/-, property of the government without a permit from the Director of Wildlife. It was reported that the said pieces representing the slaughter of about 400 elephants were found in sacks of garlic at the house of the Chinese nationals.

Well-armed criminals kill elephants and rhinos for their tusks, largely due to increasing demand in China for ivory ornaments and folk medicines. It is reported further that most of the tusks smuggled from the east African country end up in Asia.

International trade in ivory was banned in 1989 after the population of elephants dropped from the millions in the mid-20th century to about 600,000 by the end of the 1980s. Last year, a Tanzanian Member of Parliament said poaching was out of control with an average of 30 elephants being killed for their ivory every day.

In August 2011, Tanzanian authorities seized more than 1,000 elephant tusks hidden in sacks of dried fish at Zanzibar port and destined for Malaysia.

{The dealmaker at the heart of a controversial Sh1.6 billion lease agreement with Uchumi Supermarkets Limited is accused in a forensic audit of forging the signatures of the retailer’s board to win a lucrative contract.}

But Mr Robert Kanda Nyasimi, a director at leasing company RentCo, describes himself as a shrewd businessman, who is “an authority” in the field, and insists that his deals with Uchumi were “above board”.

The report by audit firm KPMG questions the Sh1.6 billion sale and lease-back agreement that former Uchumi CEO Jonathan Ciano and chief finance officer Chadwick Okumu, on behalf of Uchumi, entered into with RentCo.

In such an arrangement, a firm sells an asset — in this case shelves, computers and desks, among others — to a financier, then rents the same from the buyer.

The deal injected much-needed capital into Uchumi, but what is interesting to investigators is that Mr Nyasimi, who initially represented Rentworks in the negotiations, ended up winning the bid, but this time as a director of RentCo.

‘KNOWLEDGE BUSINESS’

Thursday, he admitted that he had sabotaged Rentworks in the deal, but explained that he only did it as a businessman who wanted his own personal growth.

“This is a knowledge business,” he said. “It’s the people behind the company who matter, and that’s why RentCo ended up winning the bid.”

The auditors say Uchumi came out the loser as a result of the agreements; and the devil is in the detail. RentCo signed two leasing contracts with the retail chain, financed by Co-operative Bank and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB).

The first was signed on September 3, 2015, but it did not specify the value of the particular items that would be sold to RentCo.

The Strategies and Business Development Committee at Uchumi had approved a request for Sh350 million, but the offer letter approved Sh500 million.

The committee had approved the offer based on information that Co-operative Bank, the financier, would charge an interest of 12.7 per cent, but the contract Uchumi eventually signed indicated that the interest would be at 16 per cent.

The second lease, on January 14, 2015, was financed by KCB to a tune of Sh1.1 billion. The auditors, however, say they did not find any evidence of board-level discussions regarding this agreement.

A document provided to them bore the signatures of the board, but the investigators “were unable to trace evidence of draft versions of the resolutions”.

During a meeting on December 10 last year, the board said it had not signed a resolution authorising the agreement.

“They confirmed that the signatures on the second page of the resolution seemed to be theirs, but suggested that it was likely the second page was taken from another document and attached to the resolution.”

‘MALICE’

The Nation has a copy of the letter, provided to us by Mr Nyasimi. We, however, and like the forensic auditors, could not verify the authenticity of the signatures.

Based on these findings, the forensic audit recommends that the Sh1.6 billion agreement be looked into from a legal perspective to determine whether or not it was in the best interests of the company, “and whether there was misrepresentation by the vendor”, which would render it “null and void”.

However, Mr Nyasimi reads malice in KPMG’s recommendations. For one, he says, he is being condemned unheard as, he claims, the forensic auditors never made any effort to contact him.

In a letter to new Uchumi CEO Julius Kipeng’etich, dated March 3, Mr Nyasimi complains that the forensic auditors “only consulted with our competitor, Rentworks”, and hence presented “a one-sided version of events”.

Mr Nyasini on Thursday said he had used his business acumen to his advantage, and should not be punished for it. He said that, other than Uchumi, he had successfully leased the assets of Nakumatt and Naivas supermarkets.

The moral and ethical grounding of his businesses might be in doubt, but here is a man who revels in the astuteness with which he goes about clinching multi-million-shilling contracts.

His business portfolio says it all. In 2013, he says, he made business deals worth Sh400 million, in 2014 he clinched contracts worth Sh1.8 billion, and last year, he leased assets worth Sh4.3 billion.

Among these assets are the Ford Rangers and Subaru Foresters being used by the government.