RWANDA - Sixty-two prisoners were last week released from Gisenyi Prison in Rubavu District. Twenty-two of them are charged with Genocide crimes while others are convicts of ordinary crimes. In an interview, the prison director, Roger Gahaya, said the inmates were thoroughly screened before their release to avoid errors. He said that many of them hail from Ngororero, Nyabihu and Rubavu districts. Those released were immediately taken to Mutobo camp to attend a month-long solidarity course to help them easily integrate into their respective communities. Gisenyi prison accommodates a total of 4,456 prisoners.
Those released are part of about 9000 prisoners who walked out of the cells last week, with over 90 percent of them suspected to have played part in the 1994 Genocide that claimed at least one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Genocide convicts were released under a January 2003 Presidential Decree, while convicts of other crimes were granted parole after meeting various conditions.
MONROVIA, Liberia -- Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf accepted the resignation of her chief of staff, Willie Knuckles, after he was photographed having sex with two women, tarnishing a government campaign for moral probity.
Johnson-Sirleaf, a longtime campaigner for women's rights, said Knuckles had not broken the law but the scandal threatened to derail efforts to combat sexual abuse and raise standards in Liberia's public life after a brutal 1989-2003 civil war.
Knuckles, who is also minister of state for presidential affairs and is married with children, has accused opposition lawmakers of trying to use the photographs to blackmail him.
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Somali authorities have arrested six suspects in the hijacking of a U.N.-chartered cargo ship delivering food aid, officials said Tuesday. The MV Rozen, however, remained under the control of four pirates who were aboard with 12 crew members as hostages, said the U.N's food agency.
The ship had been contracted to deliver aid to Somalia, where around 1 million people are suffering from a drought that hit the region last year, and had just delivered 1,800 metric tons (about 1,900 short tons) of food when it was seized.
KINSHASA - On 26 February 2007, the Kalamu Peace Court in the city of Boma, in Bas-Congo province sentenced Popol Ntula Vita, a reporter with the Kinshasa-based weekly "La Cite Africaine", to three months in prison without parole and a fine of US$6,450 in damages.
The journalist was prosecuted for "defamation and damaging allegations" against Thomas Ndombasi, the local head of the public tax office and three of his colleagues. In a 6 January 2007 article entitled "Alert at the Boma Tax Centre", the journalist accused Ndombasi and his three colleagues of misappropriating funds from the issuing of vehicle licence plates. The journalist contended, among other things, that the licence plates were over-priced and the price difference was pocketed by the above-mentioned individuals.
DARFUR - The International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor today named a Sudanese minister and a militia commander as the first suspects he wants tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region. The Security Council referred the Darfur issue, along with the names of 51 suspected perpetrators, to the ICC in March 2005, after a UN inquiry into whether genocide occurred in Darfur found the Government responsible for crimes under international law and strongly recommended referring the dossier to the Court.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo presented evidence showing that Ahmad Muhammad Harun, former Sudanese Minister of State for the Interior, and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, "jointly committed crimes against the civilian population in Darfur," according to an ICC press release.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC - The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called for an urgent international aid to avert massive suffering and death in the Central African Republic (CAR).
The Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Esther Guluma added that denying that a humanitarian crisis existed would result in the deaths of many children in the next few months. "If we are to avert suffering and death on a massive scale in these areas, UNICEF has to accelerate its activities, along with the government, our UN partners and the few non-governmental organisations on the ground," said Ms Guluma.
She emphasised that there was a need to act immediately on the situation in CAR, since there were already thousands of refugees who had fled across the country's western border with Chad. In the accelerated emergency phase now underway, relief supplies have started arriving in Bangui, the capital. "Some one million people are affected by the conflict in CAR, the sixth least developed country in the world, with indicators for maternal and child mortality, already very poor, now on a continuing decline,"
