Day: September 6, 2021

South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday hailed the placement of his jailed predecessor Jacob Zuma on medical parole as opposition and other groups suspected it was a political move and demanded answers.

Just 60 days into his 15-month jail term for defying an order to answer questions before graft investigators, prison authorities announced Sunday that the 79-year-old politician was placed on medical parole.

Zuma was hospitalized a month into his incarceration, at a facility outside the prison, under the care of military medics. He remains there and his illness remains a closely guarded secret.

The decision coincided with a meeting of the ruling African National Congress’s National Executive Committee.

“We welcome this,” Ramaphosa said in a televised briefing to mark the end of the meeting. “We would like to wish him a quick recovery as he is restored back to his home to be with his loved ones.”

But the granting of parole has angered opposition and civil society groups, which suspect it was a politically inspired move and want answers.

“It’s extremely suspicious,” John Steenhuisen, leader of the largest opposition Democratic Alliance, told AFP. “This is a political decision, not a medical decision.”

He and other opposition figures have vowed to force the prisons to publish details outlining the steps taken to reach the parole decision.

Mmusi Maimane, leader of pressure group One South Africa movement, said the action demonstrated that “if you are politically connected, the inside of the prison is not a place for you”.

But a prisons official insisted the decision was above board and based on doctors’ conclusions.

“Mr Zuma does require a great deal of medical attention” and met the criteria for medical parole, the official said, while declining to disclose Zuma’s illness.

Lawson Naidoo, head of a civic group, the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, said “the timing of the announcement, apart from coming on a Sunday afternoon, does raise questions because… Mr. Zuma would have been eligible for parole in a few weeks’ time, having served the minimum requirement for a 15-month jail sentence.”

The news came just three days before the resumption Thursday of Zuma’s long-running corruption trial over an arms deal dating back more than two decades.

Last month, the trial was postponed to September 9, pending a medical report on his fitness to stand trial.

“Given Mr Zuma’s elongated Stalingrad strategy in terms of avoiding having to answer charges of fraud and corruption related to the arms deal, it would come as no surprise to anyone if this medical parole is now going to be used… as a pretext to say he is not fit to stand trial,” he said.

Another opposition group, ActionSA, complained that the parole pointed to a “criminal justice system (that) treats the most powerful amongst us with kid gloves and allows them to evade justice and accountability at the first opportunity”.

Source: Voice of America

Algeria has arrested 27 suspected members of a separatist group that the government has declared a terrorist organization, after an attack in two northern towns, police said Monday.

They said the 27 were suspected of belonging to MAK, a group that seeks independence for the Berber-speaking Kabylie region.

Morocco’s support for MAK was one of the reasons cited by Algeria in cutting diplomatic relations with the kingdom late last month.

Police said the 27 were arrested “for their attempt to sow terror and strife among citizens by order of parties abroad,” police said in a statement. “They resorted to assault and robbery of citizens’ shops.”

The statement said the attacks and the arrests took place in the northern towns of Kherrata and Beni Ourtilane in the past 48 hours but gave no further details.

It said several members of the security forces were injured when they intervened to protect citizens and their properties during the incident.

Police found accessories of military uniforms, bladed weapons, forged seals and mobile phones after searching the homes of those arrested, it added.

The government has blamed MAK, which Algiers declared terrorist organization last year, for devastating wildfires that killed at least 65 people in the Kabylie region, east of Algiers, last month. MAK, whose leadership is based in France, has denied any involvement.

Source: Voice of America

Somalia’s president and prime minister were in a standoff Monday over the prime minister’s suspension of the country’s top spy chief.

Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble announced Monday morning that he is suspending Fahad Yassin, the director of NISA, Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency.

Roble said he was acting because Yassin had failed to deliver a report on the killing of one of the agency’s spies, Ikran Tahlil Farah, who disappeared in June and was declared dead by NISA this month.

A few hours later Monday, President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo rejected the prime minister’s action, saying he has no constitutional mandate to suspend the spy chief, and urged Yassin to continue in his role.

Security analyst Samira Ahmed of the Mogadishu-based Hiraal Institute said it would be helpful for an outside party to intervene to end the escalating political difference between the two highest offices.

If that does not happen, she said, there is a threat of division as the security forces will be obliged to choose between the conflicting orders. She said that would result in security threats to the country and the ongoing elections.

The mother of the slain officer, Qali Mohamud, welcomed the prime minister’s move to fire the spy chief and appealed to the president to support it.

She urged the president not to obstruct justice for her daughter by blocking the prime minister’s decision, and asked the head of state to put himself in her shoes, as a parent seeking justice for her child.

It’s nothing new for a Somali president and prime minister to be at odds over the powers of their respective offices.

Muse Ahmed, a law expert at Somali National University, believes there is a need for a clear separation of powers in the Somali draft constitution.

He said the absence of the constitutional court has complicated the recurrent political difference between the Somali president and his prime minister. He added that the appointing powers of the two leaders in the constitution is not clear. Therefore, he said, there is a need for a new chapter in the draft constitution to make clear the powers of the two, especially during government transitional periods.

The leaders of the opposition have welcomed the move by the prime minister to suspend the director of intelligence, saying it was long overdue. The director himself has not responded to the prime minister.

Source: Voice of America

A fresh political rift between Somalia’s president and prime minister appears to be opening a power struggle between the two top leaders of the country, which is struggling to hold elections and prevent frequent terrorist attacks.

On Monday, Somalia Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble suspended Fahad Yasin, chief of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), over failing to provide reliable evidence of investigations into the alleged killing of 24-year-old Ikran Tahlil Farah, who worked in NISA’s cybersecurity department.

NISA last week blamed the Islamist militant group al-Shabab for Ikran’s death, prompting angry and frustrated posts on social media from Ikran’s parents and opposition leaders, who say the agency itself had been involved.

In a statement published Friday on pro-al-Shabab websites, a spokesman for the group said al-Shabab knows nothing about Ikran’s alleged killing.

Roble’s move against the NISA chief has prompted a public rebuke from President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known as Farmajo, who in a counter move hours after the prime minister’s decision, issued a directive reinstating the intelligence chief. Both men were citing constitutional articles to support their cases.

Roble said he suspended Fahad “for failing to deliver a report on the murder of one of the agency’s agents.”

In April, after anger and armed violence in the capital, Mogadishu, that followed Parliament’s move to extend the president’s four-year term by another two years, the confrontation was resolved when the president put the prime minister in charge of security and organizing long-delayed indirect elections.

Mohamed issued his own statement calling the prime minister’s move unconstitutional. “(Yasin) should continue being the director of NISA,” the president said.

Analysts say this latest rift is highlighting a growing division at the heart of the country’s political elite and threatens to put the country into a new political crisis.

“The political exercises of the president and the minister is clear evidence that there has been a growing mistrust and a power struggle between the two leaders,” Shoki Ahmed Hayir, a Somalia political analyst and professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, told VOA Somali.

“We know the prime minister took this decision to address a sensitive issue over the disappearance of a female intelligence officer that could plunge the country into political and security risks,” said Hussein Moalim Mohamud, Somalia’s former national security adviser.

Opposition leaders have welcomed Roble’s move to suspend Fahad, a former Al-Jazeera journalist, whom they believe to be a close friend of the president.

The new dispute followed months of political wrangling that have threatened to further destabilize a country already riven by militant attacks and clan rivalries.

Hayir believes the new power struggle between the president and the prime minister is threatening the country’s long-delayed upcoming elections.

“This is not only a political threat, but also a threat to the country’s future, including the possibility of holding elections. It is also a threat to a justice for the family of Ikran,” Hayir said.

“The problem is that there are contradicting and unclear chapters in the country’s draft federal provisional constitution over the powers of the president and the prime minister,” said Abdirahman Dhubad, a political and legal analyst in Mogadishu.

Source: Voice of America

The military leaders who seized power and dissolved Guinea’s National Assembly said Monday they would set up a transitional government.

The details of the promised transition were not immediately clear, but they followed widespread condemnation of the coup from the international community.

In a speech the day after his men declared on national television that they had arrested the president and dissolved the country’s constitution, Army Colonel Mamady Doumbouya promised a “government of national union.”

He also stated that there would be no “witch hunt” of the government officials he dismissed during the takeover and replaced with regional military commanders.

Doumbouya hoped to calm concerns about economic upheaval, promising that Guinea would “uphold all its undertakings (and) mining agreements,” stressing “its commitment to give favorable treatment to foreign investment in the country.”

Mining accounts for roughly 35% of GDP in Guinea, whose citizens rarely reap the benefits of the country’s mineral wealth because of corruption and lack of infrastructure.

A video emerged hours into the apparent takeover that showed Guinean President Alpha Conde in a room surrounded by special forces soldiers. Members of the military who referred to themselves as the National Rally and Development Committee (CNRD) later issued a statement saying the 83-year-old Conde was not harmed and was in contact with his doctors.

In October, Conde won a third term in office after amending the constitution to allow him to run again. The controversial election sparked violent protests throughout the country.

Fighting was reported earlier Sunday in the capital, Conakry, but following the announcement of the takeover, many people celebrated in the streets for what they believed to be a successful coup.

A statement issued Sunday by the U.S. State Department condemned the coup, warning that the “extra-constitutional measures will only erode Guinea’s prospects for peace, stability, and prosperity” and limit the ability of the United States and Guinea’s other international partners “to support the country as it navigates a path toward national unity.”

The State Department urged all sides to forge “a process of national dialogue to address concerns sustainably and transparently to enable a peaceful and democratic way forward for Guinea to realize its full potential.”

The United Nations, France and the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, were quick to condemn the unrest in Guinea.

Mohamed Ibn Chambas, former special representative of the U.N. secretary general and former head of the U.N. Office for West Africa and the Sahel, told VOA that ECOWAS bears no responsibility for the unrest in Guinea because its leadership repeatedly warned Conde against amending the constitution and running for a third term.

Chambas says he expects ECOWAS to reiterate its “policy of zero tolerance for military coups d’état,” adding that there “is no way that the current situation can be accepted by the authority of heads of state and government.”

Source: Voice of America