Politics

US to withdraw military personnel from Niger— Source

Published

8 months ago

April 21, 2024

A Reuters source familiar with the situation around the Niger Republic and the United States has revealed that the US is finalizing plans to pull its troops out of Niger.

The source also said that US Deputy Secretary of State, Kurt Campbell, and Niger’s leaders had reached a deal.

As at last year, there were just over 1,000 U.S. troops in Niger. The military ran out of two bases there, one of which was a drone base called Air Base 201, which was built near Agadez in central Niger at a cost of more than $100 million.

Attacks on Islamic State fighters and members of al-Qaeda’s Sahel branch, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, have been hitting this base since 2018. That happened last year when Niger’s army took over. The US and France had been working closely with Niger on security issues before the coup.

There were, however, juntas in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso that also ended military deals with former Western allies like Washington and Paris. They also left the regional political and economic bloc ECOWAS and grew their links with Russia.

The source revealed that in the next few days, people will talk about how that drawdown of troops will look. The source asked not to be named. The source said that even with this step, the U.S. and Niger would still have political and business ties.

The New York Times reported earlier on Friday that in the next few months, more than 1,000 American soldiers would leave Niger.

The junta in Niger said last month that it was ending right away a military agreement that let military personnel and civilian staff from the US Department of Defense work on its land.

After that, the Pentagon said it was looking for more information about what to do next. It also said that the U.S. government had “direct and frank” talks with Niger’s ruling military council before the junta’s announcement and was still talking to them.

Last week, hundreds of people protested in the streets of Niger’s capital to demand that U.S. troops leave. This was after the junta changed its policy even more by ending the military agreement with the U.S. and letting Russian military instructors in.

In the past four years, there have been eight coups in West and Central Africa. These have happened in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and other countries. This has made people more worried about the loss of democracy in the area.

Politics

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

Published

9 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

9 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.