Metro

Nigerian ‘atheist with a cause’ bags 24 years in prison for blasphemy

Published

1 year ago

April 5, 2022

A Nigerian free thinker who calls himself ‘atheist with a cause,’ Mubarak Bala, has been sentenced to 24 years in prison by a High Court in Kano State after he pleading guilty to18 charges of blasphemy.

Born in Kano, a predominantly Muslim state in northern Nigeria, Bala got into trouble in 2020 when he made a Facebook post criticizing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, an act the Muslims considered blasphemous and often carries a death sentence in Nigeria’s mostly Muslim society where Sharia laws are practiced.

The post which made in Hausa language literally questioned the existence of Allah and asked why the people were suffering if God existed.

The offending Facebook post by Mubarak Bala

A few days after the post, Bala, who is the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, an association of atheist and free thinkers in Nigeria, was arrested at his home in Kaduna on April 28, 2020 and taken to Kano, where complaints of blasphemy and incitement were lodged against him.

He had been in detention since then without charges brought against him, according to his wife, Amina.

Despite several campaigns for his release by the group and other activists, Bala was charged to court on Tuesday, where the presiding judge, Justice Farouk Lawan, found him guilty and sent him to jail.

When the charges were read to him, he pleaded guilty to all the charges and accepted responsibility for the Facebook post he made.

Even when his lawyer, James Ibor, tried to persuade Bala to change his plea to not guilty, he insisted that he was guilty to charges and ready to face the consequences.

Bala has had several run-ins with his family when he publicly renounced his Islamic faith in 2014, an act the family said was forbidden and had brought dishonor and shame to the family, and punishable by death in accordance with Sharia laws.

He was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital with the family believing he had run mad by denouncing his religion.

Related Topics:Atheist Blasphemy Featured Muslim Prison

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Metro

Rwandan President, Kagame sacks over 200 military personnel in major shake-up

Published

18 hours ago

June 7, 2023

Akanimoh Etim

Rwandan President, Paul Kagame has sacked over 200 soldiers including top military brass and commanders from the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) in a massive shake-up.

The dismissed officers include the former Commander of the Reserve Forces, Maj. Gen. Aloys Muganga, and Brig. Gen. Francis Mutiganda, a former Head of External Security in the National Intelligence Services, as well as 14 senior officers.

The announcement of the sacking of the officers which was contained in a statement released by the RDF on Wednesday, did not give reason for the sackings, but the move come a day after the president reshuffled the top echelon of the country’s military, which saw the firing of the Defence Minister and an Army Chief.

The sacking of the soldiers has further heightened tension between Rwanda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, with each side accusing the other of working with rebels to topple one another’s governments, according to reports in local media.

Metro

UN war crimes court declares Rwandan genocide suspect, Felicien Kabuga unfit to stand trial

Published

19 hours ago

June 7, 2023

Akanimoh Etim

An 88-year-old Rwandan genocide suspect, Felicien Kabuga has been declared unfit to stand trial by judges at a United Nations War Crimes Court in The Hague.

In a decision published by the court on Wednesday, the judges acknowledged that Kabuga was no longer able to actively participate in his trial, and rather proposed an alternative process that aims to resemble a trial but does not allow for a conviction instead of stopping the proceedings completely.

“The trial chamber finds Mr. Kabuga is no longer capable of meaningful participation in his trial,” the publication said.

“The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, therefore, finds that Mr. Kabuga is not fit for trial and is very unlikely to regain fitness in the future.

“It is therefore agreed to adopt an alternative finding procedure that resembles a trial as closely as possible, but without the possibility of a conviction,” it added.

Kabuga who was arrested in Paris where he had been in hiding under a false identity for several years, was one of the most wanted suspects of the Rwandan genocide, and was charged at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda with genocide and crimes against humanity.

At his initial arraignment in September last year, the ICC heard that Kabuga was alleged to have been the main financier of the ethnic Hutu militias who slaughtered over 800,000 minority Tutsis as well as political opponents during the genocide in 1994.

According to the UN, Kabuga, a wealthy businessman from the Hutu ethnic group, had established and financed an infamous media outfit, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which was notorious for inciting violence and promoting the targeting and elimination of individuals from the Tutsi ethnic group who were referred to as “Cockroaches”.

Kabuga was arrested in Paris in 2020 after decades on the run and sent for trial in The Hague where he pleaded not guilty to charges of sponsoring the infamous Hutu radical radio station urging people to kill Tutsi “cockroaches”.

He also denied supplying machetes and supporting the murderous Interahamwe Hutu militia.