Musings From Abroad

US places stiffer sanctions on South African firms linked to Islamic State

Published

2 years ago

November 8, 2022

The United States Treasury Department says it has imposed a second round of stiff sanctions on some South African firms it says have “provided financial or material support to the Islamic State group.”

The sanctions which were imposed on Monday, becomes the second of such sanctions in less than a week on people and firms in Africa who have links to the terrorist group.

The latest financial sanctions, according to the US Treasury, are targeting South African entities including a notorious cell leader, Farhad Hoomer, who was accused of expressing “the will and intent to attack the interests of the United States,” the Department said in a statement.

The Treasury Department has, last week, issued financial and diplomatic sanctions against a weapons trafficking network operating in Somalia with links to the Al-Shabaab extremist group.

The US had placed the sanction over what it said was a Somali Islamic State weapons trafficking cell accused with the proliferation of dangerous weapons into the Horn of Africa nation.

In the latest action by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, four people and eight companies controlled by individuals said to have links with the South African Islamic State cell including Nufael Akbar, Yunus Mohamad Akbar, Mohamad Akbar, and Umar Akbar.

Their gold trading, construction and other firms are also targeted for the sanctions with the move freezing and blocking potential transactions with US entities and preventing Americans from doing business with them.

“As part of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, the United States will continue to partner with South Africa to deny ISIS the ability to exploit the country’s economy to raise and transfer funds in support of ISIS terrorist activities,’Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, said in the statement.

Nelson added that the sanctions were targeting “key individuals in ISIS’s network in South Africa, as well as their business assets, who have played pivotal roles in enabling terrorism and other criminal activities in the region.”

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Musings From Abroad

Finnish court imprisons Nigeria’s Simon Ekpa for aiding terrorism

Published

21 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Simon Ekpa, a Nigerian separatist leader based abroad, has been placed under detention by the Päijät Häme District Court in Finland on suspicion of inciting others to commit acts of terrorism.

According to the local daily, Helsingin Sanomat, the court rendered the ruling on Thursday following his arraignment by the Central Criminal Police for his involvement in the terror attacks that have afflicted the southeast area of Nigeria.

“The police suspect that the man has promoted his efforts from Finland with means that have led to violence against civilians in the region of South-Eastern Nigeria,” stated Otto Hiltunen, the crime commissioner and investigation head.

“The man has carried out his activity, among other things, on his social media channels.”

Hiltunen also informed the court that the police suspected four additional individuals in Finland of funding Ekpa’s activities.

According to the story, Ekpa is of Nigerian descent and was born in the Finnish city of Lahti.

His offence occurred between August 23, 2021, and November 18, 2024, according to court documents cited in the publication.

Ekpa is not the only person the police have arrested. In February 2023, they caught him at a private Lahtian flat, but he was freed the same day.

Through the Eastern Security Network (ESN) and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, Ekpa has continued to be outspoken on social media, raising money and agitating for a Biafran nation to secede. In the southeast part of Nigeria, both factions have been involved in acts of violence, murders, and maimings.

Since gaining formal independence in 1960, Nigeria has seen the emergence of several separatist organisations. The latest surge of calls for self-determination among different ethnic groups has been louder under its immediate previous President Muhammadu Buhari.

Musings From Abroad

Malian singer Rokia Traore arrested in Italy, to be sent to Belgium

Published

2 days ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

After Italy’s top court denied her appeal, well-known Malian singer, Rokia Traore, who was detained in Rome in June due to a global child custody dispute, will be sent over to Belgium in the next few days, her attorney announced on Wednesday.

The 50-year-old Traore is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR and one of Africa’s most well-known vocalists.

“Rokia suffered an injustice. She was arrested without the Belgian criminal court hearing her voice. Now, the battle for Rokia’s rights moves to Brussels,” lawyer Maddalena Del Re said in a statement to Reuters.

The attorney also stated that in its decision late Tuesday, Italy’s Court of Cassation upheld an extradition decision from the European Court of Justice.

Under a European arrest order, Traore was taken into custody on June 20 at the Fiumicino airport in Rome. In October 2023, she was given a two-year prison sentence in Belgium related to a dispute over her daughter’s custody.

She had flown to perform outside Rome’s Colosseum, and she has been imprisoned in Civitavecchia, close to the Italian city, since her detention at Fiumicino.

Lawyer Del Re said that because a conviction was rendered without the defendant’s presence, the Belgian process goes against both international norms and Italian constitutional standards.

After she disregarded a court order to turn over her baby to her Belgian father, the singer’s divorced ex-partner, she was initially taken into custody in France in 2020 on a Belgian arrest warrant.

She disobeyed orders not to leave France until her extradition case was handled by taking a private jet to Mali months after being conditionally released. Mali is where her daughter resides.