AfricaDigest 9/29/10

[AfricaDigest Manager]

Pirate ringleader faces execution in Somalia

A pirate ringleader has been sentenced to death by a court in the
breakaway Somali state of Puntland.
Salah Mohamed Gelle faces execution for murdering Sayid Jacfar, the
Pakistani skipper of hijacked cargo ship the MV QSM Dubai, in early
June.

Seven other pirates who took part in the assault were sentenced to
jail terms of between 10 and 17 years.
Some were also ordered to pay fines of about $2,000 (£1,260) by the
court in Bossasso, Puntland's business capital.
"Salah Mohamed Gelle, the first defendant was found guilty of killing
the captain Sayid Jacfar and therefore was sentenced to execution,"
said Mohamed Yusuf, the presiding judge, according to AFP news agency.

No surrender

Pirates seized the 15,000-tonne Panama-flagged ship in the Gulf of
Aden in the early hours of 2 June.
It was sailing from Brazil in the "internationally recommended transit
corridor" in the Gulf when it was seized.
The vessel had a crew of 24 made up of Ghanaian, Egyptian, Pakistani
and Bangladeshi nationals.
When soldiers from Puntland stormed the ship, the pirates refused to
surrender and killed Mr Jacfar.
Puntland, which declared itself an autonomous state within Somalia in
1998, has been used by pirates as a base for their operations.
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Gyude Bryant: Charges dropped against Liberia ex-leader

All charges have been dropped against Liberia's former president Gyude
Bryant, who governed after the end of the civil war in 2003.
Mr Bryant faced charges of economic sabotage and theft of property.
He had also been accused of embezzling more than $1m (£660,000) when
he was head of the interim government, but that charge was dropped
last year.

"A major wrong has been corrected," Mr Bryant told the BBC.
"I have always said from day one that I was innocent of all charges."
After Charles Taylor agreed to step down in 2003, Mr Bryant led a
power-sharing government, including rebel groups and Taylor loyalists
for two-and-a-half years.
He handed over to Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first female elected
head of state.
Mr Taylor is on trial in The Hague for war crimes allegedly committed
in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
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Nigerian town Aba shuts down after school kidnap

Schools, banks and markets are refusing to open in Nigeria's south-
eastern town of Aba where 15 children were kidnapped on their way to
school on Monday.
Residents told the BBC they feared further attacks by gang leaders
notorious for demanding large ransoms.
Police say the gunmen holding the children have demanded $130,000
(£81,500) for their release.

There has been a rise in hostage-taking in Abia state, where many
middle class Nigerians travel with armed escorts.
Abia state is on the fringes of the Niger Delta, where gunmen used to
target oil workers for a ransom.
But in recent years, they have been kidnapping prominent Nigerians and
their relatives, rather than foreign oil workers, whose security has
been improved.

Police spokesman Geoffrey Ogbonna told the BBC that efforts had been
intensified to find the whereabouts of the children.
They were on their way to the Abayi International School in Aba, the
state's commercial capital, when a vehicle blocked the path of their
school bus.
He said the children, of nursery and primary school age, came from
wealthy Nigerian families.
Most hostages are released unharmed after a ransom is paid.

President Goodluck Jonathan described Monday's kidnapping as "callous
and cruel".
"President Jonathan has ordered the inspector general of police and
heads of other security agencies to take all necessary steps to rescue
the abducted children and return them safely to their parents," his
spokesman Ima Niboro said.

A banker, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity, said he
would not return to work until security was improved, and he was
keeping his children at home.
Correspondents said that on Wednesday morning market keepers were also
seen closing down, as rumours of an attack spread.
The BBC's Caroline Duffield in Lagos said Abia state was awash with
guns and in recent months it had become a by-word for kidnapping and
armed robbery.

In recent weeks the governor of Abia state offered the gang leaders an
amnesty in return for giving up weapons.
That offer has been rejected, as intermediaries for the criminal
godfathers said they did not believe the governor was serious, our
reporter said.
Kidnappings in Nigeria's south-east are carried out by criminal gangs
seeking ransom, but also by armed groups demanding a fairer
distribution of oil revenue in a country flowing with oil but where
most people live on less than $1 a day.

An amnesty that came into effect in the Delta last year has reduced
unrest in the region - though three French oil workers were abducted
in a raid on an offshore drilling ship last week.
Nigeria's parliament is considering a bill which would impose the
death penalty on convicted kidnappers in a bid to deter would-be
hostage-takers.
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Did Guinea democracy activists give their lives in vain?
By Mark Doyle
BBC News

On 28 September 2009, soldiers of Guinea's Presidential Guard burst
into a football stadium and opened fire with live ammunition on
unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators.
They fired into the spectator stands; they shot people who were
running away; an estimated 150 people were murdered.
They raped numerous women at the stadium and they detained others for
rape later; they illegally arrested dozens of people and tortured
them.
All this is according to numerous eyewitnesses I interviewed just a
few weeks after the stadium massacre.
The memories were still raw and the wounds - on the thighs and
stomachs of some of the women, and on the backs of some of the men -
were still visible.

Waiting for justice
It was an event that was so shocking that Guinean pro-democracy
activists thought it might prove to be a seminal event - a catalyst
for change.
Whether that happens will now be decided in the next few weeks. Under
local and international pressure, elections are being held which
activists say may be the democratic response to that terrible day last
September.

But one year on, according to Human Rights Watch, "none of those
responsible for the killings has been brought to trial".
There are several reasons for this but, according to the victims and
their families, no excuses.
Guinea's history has been mainly undemocratic since independence from
France in 1958 and, of course, before that, under colonial domination.

The army has ruled for many of those years and has grown into an
unaccountable, bloated body of over 30,000 men - far more than is
required in a country that faces no serious outside threats.

The death in 2008 of the longtime military leader Gen Lansana Conte
gave opposition politicians a possible opening.
An army captain, Moussa Dadis Camara, seized power. But at first, at
least, he promised he would not stand in elections.
Gradually, that promise was eroded and discipline in the army
collapsed. Power bases developed in different military corps - even
within different parts of the sprawling army headquarters in the
capital Conakry.
Stadium stormed

Pro-democracy groups decided to press their case and on 28 September,
2009, they gathered in Conakry's main football stadium to denounce the
presumed candidacy of Capt Camara, widely known as just "Dadis".
One man who was there said: "There were 50,000 people in the stadium
shouting 'Freedom!' 'Freedom for the people of Guinea!'."
Some disputed the numbers attending, but few questioned what happened
next.
Soldiers from the Presidential Guard and other military units entered
the stadium and, without warning, opened fire.
"They hit me until I lost consciousness," said one woman survivor from
the stadium. "I said: 'You can kill me but you cannot rape me'.
"An old man was there with his son. He told the soldiers to leave me
alone. They slit his throat then they killed his son.
"I lost consciousness three times", the woman continued. "They were
raping others around me. They raped my cousin with the muzzle of a
rifle. Now I feel so bad, I just want to die."

The army imploded with accusations of responsibility for the massacre.
A few weeks later there was a shootout between Dadis and one of his
aides. Dadis took a bullet in the head and has been recovering in
exile in Burkina Faso ever since.

Democratic hopes
Following local and international pressure, a first round of
democratic elections took place in June. Two front-runners emerged -
the long time opposition figure Alpha Conde and the smooth politician
Cellou Dalein Diallo.
But cracks began appearing between the civilian politicians - who had
been so united in the face of military dictatorship - as the prospect
of real power beckoned.

There were accusations of vote rigging during the first round of
polling. Election officials were sacked.
But there is still a chance that the events of that day last September
could prove to be a force for democratic change.
The government that emerges from the second round of polling - now
tentatively due on 10 October - is being urged by human rights groups
to end the cycle of violence and impunity that created the conditions
for massacres like the football stadium killings.
Corinne Dufka of Human Rights Watch, one of the first foreign
researchers to investigate the massacre in detail, said that ensuring
those responsible for the 2009 violence were put behind bars would be
"a very good place to start".
It is a statement many Guinean civilians would agree with.
But the reaction of the men with guns - the 30,000-strong army - may,
in the short term at least, be more important.
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Freeing Sahel hostages by force is too risky: experts
By Michel Moutot (AFP) – 1 day ago

PARIS — A commando raid to free Al Qaeda's hostages in north Africa is
low on the agenda in Paris, because it means great risk to the lives
of the captives, experts told AFP, but they spoke of covert
preparations for a last-ditch strike.
Kidnapped on September 16 in Niger, the seven prisoners -- five French
nationals, a Togolese and a Madagascan -- are being held by Al Qaeda
of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in a mountain stronghold in north Mali,
according to a Malian source confirmed by French officials.

In this rugged and hostile region between Mali and Algeria, the
kidnappers, under the orders of Algerian jihadist leader Abou Zeid,
have long benefited from complicity with the nomad population, said
French explorer Regis Belleville, who has criss-crossed the region by
camel.
"Given its contacts with the tribes, AQIM knows everything that is
going on in the area. It would be very difficult to surprise them," he
said. "All the more so since there are smugglers' routes everywhere.
"With their (powerful) all-terrain vehicles, they are mobile, fast;
they can move at the slightest suspicion, going into such isolated
regions that they would be a logistical nightmare for anyone. And I'm
sure orders have been given in the event of an attack to kill the
French people."

AQIM members will be especially wary, according to Frederic Gallois,
who led the French paramilitary police's special intervention group
from 2002-2007, since French special forces on July 22 carried out a
raid on AQIM bases in Mali, in the vain hope of rescuing hostage
Michel Germaneau. Germaneau was subsequently executed by his captors.
"They fear an armed operation, knowing that we're capable of doing
something," Gallois said. "They have undoubtedly taken precautions."

A Malian source involved in the negotiations on Sunday assured AFP
that the hostages were "all alive" and able to stand up, but Gallois
said there would be no need for AQIM to put kilometres (miles) between
each hostage to make a rescue operation almost impossible.
"It would be enough to separate them by a few hundred metres, with two
distinct groups of kidnappers. That would mean mounting two distinct
and coordinated operations. Well, imagine five..."

Even if they are monitored from the sky by spy-planes and satellites,
if all their telecommunications might be intercepted and the
intelligence services of the region are active, AQIM can still hide
their tracks with relative ease.
"The best solution for Abou Zeid is to melt away into the nomad
population, to disguise the hostages as camel-drivers, to cut all
communications and operate only via messengers," Belleville
considered.
"Nomads live in groups of five or six people with their beasts spread
out all over the north of Mali. It's impossible to check them all. If
the AQIM boys move around, from family to family, they will become
undetectable. In any case, they have to move a lot, because there will
be so many rewards promised that they risk betrayal at any moment."

But in spite of the difficulties, it is certain that a rescue
operation is being planned by the French special forces and men of the
Action task force of the external intelligence service DGSE. Elite
troops are already deployed in the region and other operations, much
more secret and discreet, will be in preparation, experts said.

"The use of force should always be the last resort, because it is too
dangerous" in such situations, Gallois explained. "But if everything
suggests that no favourable outcome is possible, that negotiations are
impossible (...) and that there is a direct and irreversible threat to
the hostages, it becomes necessary to intervene, whatever the risk.
I'm sure that the preparations have begun."
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The lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul. -Khalil Gibran,
mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)
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