Tag: GreatLakesNews

An appeal court in Burundi has reduced the life sentence of journalist Hassan Ruvakuki to three years after scrapping his conviction on a terrorism charge.

The court found the reporter guilty of working with a criminal group, not a terrorist movement.

Ruvakuki has always maintained his innocence, saying he was arrested simply for looking into reports that a new rebel group had emerged in Burundi.

The country is recovering from a civil war which officially ended in 2005.

Some 300,000 people are said to have been killed in the 12-year conflict between the minority Tutsi-dominated army and ethnic Hutu rebels.

Ruvakuki, who worked for local radio station Bonesha FM and French state broadcaster Radio France Internationale, was given a life jail-term in June 2012 by the High Court.

It ruled that he took part in an armed attack in 2011 on a village in eastern Cankuzo province near the Tanzanian border.

Fourteen gunmen who participated in the attack were killed.

The sentence sent shockwaves across the country, with rights groups claiming that President Pierre Nkurunziza’s government was taking a heavy-handed approach in dealing with dissenting voices.

Mr Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader who won elections when the civil war ended, defended the sentence at the time.

“Before someone is a journalist he is a Burundian,” he said.

BBC

Tanzanian Police are holding two policemen and a citizen from Biharamulo district in Kagera region, in connection with illegal possession of 17 pieces of elephant tusks.

The Mara regional police commander, Mr Absalom Mwakyoma, confirmed the seizure of the ivory and arrests of the suspects yesterday.

He said the trio (names withheld) were arrested yesterday at Rwamchanga village near Mugumu town, the headquarters of Serengeti district.

The RPC credited the arrest of the policemen at a guest house to a tip-off by their civilian accomplice.

He said initial investigations revealed that the policemen were assigned to ferry the ivory by a wealthy businessman (name withheld), a resident in Biharamulo.

He said the suspects were arrested when the police in collaboration with game rangers from the Tanzania National Parks (Tanapa) trailed them.

He said the ivory was ferried in a pick-up belonging to one of the arrested policemen.

Mr Mwakyoma said the two policemen will be court-marshalled after all procedures have been followed.
The RPC said the policemen will appear in court tomorrow to answer charges of unlawful possession of government trophies.

Mr Mwakyoma said the government should have expected the law enforcers to be in the frontline in the fight against poaching instead of being perpetrators themselves.

The government is overwhelmed by the poaching, which has definitely gone out of control.

Hundreds of elephants were killed last year by poachers, prompting the government to withdraw an application to sell to China and Japan over 100 tonnes of ivory valued at over $55.5million (about Sh88.8billion).

The request had been submitted in early October last year and was due to be discussed at the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) meeting in March in Bangkok.

But conservation groups opposed the application.

Just a week after the government announced that it had submitted its latest proposal to Cites, Hong Kong authorities confiscated two shipping containers from Tanzania and Kenya loaded with 3,628kg of elephant tusks worth $3.4 million.

The following month the same Hong Kong authorities confiscated some 1,330kg of ivory worth $1.4 million believed to have been obtained after at least 150 elephants were slaughtered. Natural Resources and Tourism minister Khamis Kagasheki confirmed that the ivory came from Tanzania.

Tanzania’s total ivory stockpile stands at 137,229.20kg, out of which 101,005kg were saleable.

In 2010, the country unsuccessfully applied to be allowed to sell 90,000kg of its stockpile, then valued at $20 million. Tanzania had teamed up with Zambia to push for a one-off ivory stockpile sale, their application was rejected at last year’s Cites CoP (Conference of the Parties) in Doha, Qatar.

Stiff resistance also came from the northern neighbour, Kenya, which put up a spirited campaign to shoot down the Tanzania/Zambia request in 2010.

Countries wanting to sell their ivory stockpiles must garner the support of at least two-thirds of the 176 Cites member states.

The Uganda government has returned Euros 4 million of Irish aid money which had been diverted without authorisation by personnel in the Office of the Prime Minister in Uganda.

The money is said to have been refunded on January 07, 2013.

The money was part of the Peace Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) funds was allegedly diverted by staff in the office of the Prime Minister.

Ireland has, however, announced that the suspension of its bilateral aid to Uganda will remain in place until officials are confident that controls have been put in place to prevent misappropriation of aid money from their country.

A team from the evaluation and audit unit of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs concluded that the fraud was “very sophisticated and well-thought-out” and involved a high level of collusion at senior level.

Agencies

In Kenya, a man accused of killing his 5 children in Korogocho slum last month has committed suicide at the Muthaiga police station cells.

The body of the man identified by police as Boniface Ouma Auka was found in the cells on Monday morning.

Area divisional police chief Samuel Anampiu told a local radion in (Capital FM) they suspected the man hang himself using his clothes.

“His body was discovered this morning in the police cells. We suspect he used his clothes to kill himself so we are treating it as a suicide case,” he said.

Auka appeared in court late last month but did not plead to murder charges because he did not have a lawyer.

He was due in court on Tuesday, January 8 to plead to the charges.

The suspect was arrested two days after bodies of his five children were discovered in their house at Korogocho.

The children were aged between two and 10.

According to police, one of the children had stab wounds while the rest are believed to have been poisoned.

Their mother surfaced a day after the killings and denied any role, saying she had fled their house after a quarrel with the children’s father.

The M23 rebels have appointed Roger Lumbala, an opposition Member of Parliament onto their delegation to negotiate with the DRC government in Uganda.

Roger Lumbala, who represents the Congolese opposition political party Congolese Rally for National Democracy (RCDN), joins the M23 delegation as the vice chairperson of the negotiating team.

the M23 rebels have prepared a draft ceasefire agreement to be presented in the dialogue and have threatened to walk out of the talks if the government delegation does not agree to a ceasefire.

Jean-Marie Runiga recently said, “The demand for a ceasefire is not a sign of weakness, but a political act that reflects the actual parties to continue the search for solutions to the problems by peaceful means.

“It is also a sign of respect for our people who suffered so much from the ravages of war.”

Runiga said that ever since the M23 withdrew from Goma on December 2 last year, the DRC Government has reinforced government troops presence with support from the Hutu FDLR rebels.

However, Lambert Mende, the spokesperson of the Congolese government, told journalists in Kinshasa recently that Lumbala is wanted to answer treason charges by the DRC government.

NV

In Kenya a Commuter taxi (locally known as matatu) rammed into a heavy truck killing 4 people and leaving 7 seriously wounded.

The passengers in the bus were travelling from Kisii town to Eldoret when the accident occurred at Berekenya trading centre.

the truck is said to have been carrying electricity poles along the Kapsabet – Eldoret highway in Nandi County.

A police official Nelson Okioga said the driver of the speeding commuter bus lost control of the vehicle and rammed into the rear of the lorry.

Both drivers are said to be at large.

“We are hunting for the drivers. We also warn drivers against speeding and driving defective vehicles,” he said.

NMG