Politics

Togo: Gnassingbe reveals terror casualties amidst threats to West Africa’s coastal states

Published

2 years ago

April 30, 2023

Togolese President, Faure Gnassingbe has revealed that around 40 soldiers and 100 civilians have been killed in a jihadist “war” in northern Togo.

President Gnassingbe said in an interview with a local private station that the country had suffered heavily from the surge in the terror attacks.

“We have paid a heavy price, especially our defence and security forces, who have lost around 40 men unfortunately, and then we add civilian victims, a hundred or so civilian victims in the country.”

Togo’s neighbours in the West African sub-region like Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali are all experiencing insurgent activities, and threat of spread into coastal states like Ivory Coast, Ghana and Togo is underway.

“What is happening to us is a form of aggression by two groups… one is called the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and the other, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims,” he said, referring to a group linked to al-Qaeda. This campaign by “two terrorist organisations… is a form of war,” said Gnassingbe.

“It was a preventive operation at first, which then became defensive, and now occasionally we are also on the offensive,” he said.

United States deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of West Africa, Michael Heath, recently described the situation in the region as “a significant and burgeoning threat”, particularly as countries like Mali, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea have suffered continuous terror attacks for over a decade.

Meanwhile, members of opposition and civil society had criticised the government’s silence before the president’s latest revelation on the crisis.

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Politics

Egyptian court upholds ex-presidential candidate Ahmed Tantawy’s sentence

Published

8 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Former presidential candidate, Ahmed Tantawy, and his campaign manager, Mohamed Abou El-Diar, were found guilty of faking election paperwork, and given a one-year jail term with labour by an Egyptian court, Tantawy’s legal team announced Tuesday.

Last year, Tantawy was the most well-known candidate to run against Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for a third term, winning 89.6% of the vote.

To avoid receiving the necessary number of public endorsements to be on the ballot, he halted his campaign before to the election, alleging harassment and arrests directed at hundreds of his family members and associates.

Egyptian authorities criticised Tantawy’s tactic of distributing unapproved copies of endorsement forms to garner popular support, but they denied any misconduct.

Egypt’s Misdemeanour Appeals Court upheld the May court ruling on Monday, which prohibits Tantawy from seeking public office for five years and mandates that he pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($395).

Tantawy’s defence team member and well-known human rights attorney Khaled Ali said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that the appeals procedure was riddled with anomalies.

Ali said lawyers struggled for months to confirm court dates, with hearings appearing absent from official schedules and case files missing from court registries.

The public prosecution was not immediately available to comment on the ruling or on Ali’s allegations over the process.

Politics

Court orders Uganda to compensate LRA war crimes victims

Published

8 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Uganda’s tribunal has ordered the government to pay up to 10 million Ugandan shillings ($2,740) to each victim of Lord’s Resistance Army commander, Thomas Kwoyelo, the first senior rebel leader to be convicted.

Kwoyelo, a mid-level LRA leader, was sentenced to 40 years in jail in October for war crimes like murder, rape, slavery, torture, and kidnapping.

Kwoyelo’s “indigent” status prevented him from compensating the victims, thus the court ordered the government to compensate.

Kwoyelo’s crimes were “a manifestation of failure on the part of the government that triggers a responsibility on the state to pay reparations to the victims,” the verdict added.

The court also ordered various financial compensation to Kwoyelo’s property destruction and theft victims.

From strongholds in northern Uganda, the LRA brutalised Ugandans under Joseph Kony for over 20 years while it fought the military to destroy the government.

The militants raped, abducted, cut off victims’ limbs and mouths, and bludgeoned them to death using crude implements.

Under military pressure, the LRA withdrew to lawless forests in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic in 2005 and perpetrated civilian atrocities.

Although assaults are rare, Kony and splintered groups are reported to dwell there.

Kwoyelo was taken by the Ugandan military in 2009 in the northeastern Congo, and his case made its way through Ugandan courts until he was found guilty in August.