Category: Legal Rights

Ugandan police have rearrested two opposition lawmakers on charges of treason just minutes after they were released on bail in another case in which they stand accused of murder. The National Unity Party lawmakers deny the charges, which they say are politically motivated.

Police spokesperson Fred Enanga in a statement said authorities were holding legislator Ssegirinya Muhammed on fresh charges.

Earlier Monday, upon his release, security personnel traveling at high speed pursued the vehicle that had picked up Ssegirinya from a prison in the Wakiso district. When it pulled over, they forcefully put him into their vehicle.

Enanga said they were holding Ssegirinya at the special Investigations division for further processing.

“We want to inform the public that Honorable Ssegirinya Muhammed has also been rearrested on fresh charges of treason and incitement to violence by the joint security task team of investigators,” said Enanga.

The other lawmaker, Allan Ssewanyana, was rearrested outside the prison gate minutes after his release on Friday evening.

The two legislators, both members of the National Unity Platform party, were arrested earlier this month.

They were accused of being involved in a recent spate of murders in Masaka district in central Uganda that left close to 30 people dead. Many of the dead were killed with machetes.

The state charged the lawmakers with three counts of murder and attempted murder. In their most recent court appearance, prosecutors told the judge they were still investigating the lawmakers and amended the charge to terrorism, aiding and abetting terrorism.

Shamim Malende, the lawyer for both legislators and from whose vehicle Ssegirinya was forcefully taken, said authorities keep changing the charges against the men with no valid evidence.

“When they speak of inciting violence in Uganda, when they speak of treason, when they speak terrorism, unlawful assembly, those are political cases in Uganda. I think there’s a problem. It is either fooling the nation or it is that they do not want to speak the truth. It’s now looking like persecuting the political opponents, people who belong to the National Unity party or are against government bad policies,” said Malende.

Joel Ssenyonyi, the National Unity Platform spokesperson, said the rearrest of the legislators is President Yoweri Museveni’s way of fulfilling his word when he said he would destroy the party led by musician-turned-politician Bobi Wine.

“You know these guys are bushmen. They were in the bush as rebels and that’s why they are behaving like bushmen, disregarding court orders. Court releases somebody on bail and you say no, we shall rearrest them as they get out of jail. And that’s what Mr. Museveni is doing,” said Ssenyonyi.

The legislators’ rearrest comes just days after the president clashed with Chief Justice Alphonse Owinyi Dollo over granting bail to capital offense suspects.

While the chief justice argued that bail was a constitutional right, Museveni argued that if anyone is arrested for murder, giving that person bail is a provocation and abominable.

Source: Voice of America

YAOUNDE – Five Cameroonian policemen have been arrested, on suspicion of torture, after a video was made public showing police officers torturing a detainee, according to a senior police officer.

Cameroon’s police chief, Martin Mbarga Nguele said, the five police officers were taken into custody and appeared before a judge over the alleged torture, which took place in the capital, Yaounde, last week.

The video, which went viral in the Central African nation on Wednesday, showed the policemen interrogating, assaulting and then severely beating the detainee, suspected of theft.

Nguele said in a statement, made public yesterday that, the treatment was “inhuman.”

“The measures applied (against the policemen) are only the continuity of the permanent action in progress, for a citizen police force, truly at the service of everyone because the daily act of the police officer must tend today, only towards the well-being of the citizen,” Nguele said in the statement.

“For more than a decade, the national security has embarked on the path of professionalism, modernisation and change of mentality and morality,” he added, while stressing that the population must also respect and collaborate with the police.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

ABUJA, NIGERIA — Police in Nigeria say they have arrested three men in connection with the July abduction of more than 100 students in northern Kaduna state. Gunmen took the students from Bethel Baptist High School, part of a wave of kidnappings for ransom that have shaken communities across the north.

Nigerian national police spokesperson Frank Mba announced the arrests on Thursday as the three suspects were paraded before reporters in the capital, Abuja.

Mba didn’t disclose where the men were picked up, but said they are part of a larger 25-member gang that seized the 121 students on July 5.

About 100 of the students have since been freed, and police say operatives of Nigeria’s special tactical squad are in pursuit of other members of the gang.

One of the kidnappers told reporters he was paid about $40 for the operation. But Darlington Abdullahi, a security analyst and retired air force officer, says the kidnappings are far more lucrative.

“They’re forced to kidnap for survival, obtain ransoms,” he said. “Strangely enough, they have found out that they even make more money from the kidnapping.”

For the past year, armed gangs have been seizing students from schools in northwest and central Nigeria and squeezing thousands of dollars in ransom from their families.

About 1,200 students have been taken since December of last year. The mass kidnappings have led to sudden school closures across the affected states, mostly Kaduna, Niger, and Zamfara.

This month, Kaduna state authorities ordered the reopening of schools after shutting down for two months. Authorities promised more security at schools to prevent further attacks.But Abdullahi says he still has concerns.

“The kidnapping in parts of the north central, northwest and so on will continue until we’re able to adequately take care of the border areas through which they come in. … Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, that is the ones that come in through Benin republic,” he said.

Last month, bandits released more than 90 pupils abducted from an Islamic seminary in central Niger state after three months in captivity. The pupils are the youngest to be kidnapped by bandits in Nigeria.

Source: Voice of America

Former Chadian president Hissene Habre was ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars to victims of human rights abuses after his conviction by a special court in 2017. But by the time he died in August, Habre’s victims had still not received a dime.

The African Union-backed court tried Chad’s ex-ruler Hissene Habre in Senegal and found him guilty of crimes he committed in the 1980s — a first for the continent.

On September 15, a team of AU lawyers arrived in Chad to meet with victims’ advocates, lawyers and government officials, to begin the process of establishing a trust fund for Habre’s victims.

Habre oversaw the killing and torture of tens of thousands of people during his rule as Chad’s president from 1982 to 1990. When he was convicted, the African Union was ordered to raise about $150 million that would be allocated to more than 7,000 of Habre’s victims.

The money was supposed to come from Habre’s assets, as well as from outside contributions. But the victims still haven’t been paid.

Their plight gained renewed attention in August when Habre died just five years into his life sentence.

Jacqueline Moudeina is the lead counsel for Habre’s victims. She says the African Union has not made much progress. They have yet to furnish their headquarters and hire an executive secretary, among many other tasks.

“There’s still a lot left to do,” she says. “They waited four years; and they don’t know how many more years they’ll have to wait.” If it were up to her, they would have done it all in one week.

One important task is raising money. Maadjitonke Trahohgra, the director general of Chad’s Ministry of Justice, says the Chadian government will contribute money toward the trust fund, but he doesn’t know how much.

He says many of the victims have already passed away, but the fund will provide relief for those who survived.

Clement Abaifouta is one of the surviving victims tortured for four years during Habre’s rule. He witnessed the deaths of many fellow prisoners and in some cases, was forced to dig their graves.

Now 63, he serves as president of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of the Hissene Habre regime, an organization advocating for victims and their families.

He says now that the African Union has come to expedite the process, victims are satisfied and they hope the process will go faster than expected.

Experts from the African Union plan to return to Chad in the coming weeks to continue setting up the trust fund.

Source: Voice of America

Rights groups in Africa have condemned the Rwandan High Court’s sentencing of Paul Rusesabagina, made famous in the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda, to 25 years in prison. The court on Monday found Rusesabagina and 20 other suspects guilty of terrorism. Rusesabagina denies the charges, and critics say his arrest and trial did not meet international standards for justice.

Bahima Macumi fled to Kenya more than 20 years ago following Rwanda’s civil war, but has been following Rusesabagina’s trial closely.

He said Rusesabagina clearly did not get a fair trial.

He says this shows the Rwandan government does not want to be corrected, because if it did, they would have at least listened to this person who saved over 1,000 people. He says if the person who saved over 1,000 people can be called a terrorist, what would they call the one who did not save anybody?

To the world at large, Rusesabagina is a hero for sheltering at-risk Tutsis and Hutus in the Kigali hotel he managed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

To the Rwandan government, he is a threat, a fierce critic of President Paul Kagame who allegedly supported a militia group that seeks to overthrow the Rwandan government.

Human rights advocates are condemning his conviction.

According to Amnesty International, the Monday court ruling puts in question the fairness of Rwanda’s judicial system when it comes to high-profile and sensitive cases.

Sarah Jackson is Amnesty’s deputy regional director for East Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes.

“We found many fair trial violations, including his unlawful rendition to Rwanda, his imposed disappearance at the beginning of the case and his initial inability to select a lawyer of his own choosing and all of these things during the pretrial period impact the fairness of the trial itself,” Jackson said.

Rusesabagina has 30 days to appeal his conviction, but rights groups doubt that judges can make an impartial decision on the case. Human Rights Watch’s Lewis Mudge explains.

“Unfortunately, this case has become an emblematic case in Rwanda so much that it really does highlight the lack of independence in the judiciary,” Mudge said. “It’s difficult for us to say that an appeal should happen or will happen because that will imply a degree of confidence in the judicial system that is currently in Rwanda.”

Rusesabagina says he was tricked into going to Rwanda in August of 2020. He had boarded a flight in Dubai that he believed was bound for Burundi, only for the flight to land in Kigali, where he was quickly arrested.

He went on trial along with 20 others in February. U.S State Department spokesman Ned Price Monday said the reported lack of fair trial in Rusesabagina’s case calls into question the fairness of the verdict. Rwandan prosecutors maintain the trial was fair.

Source: Voice of America