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SIERRA LEONE: RUF leader orders his men to disarm
An order by Revolutionary United Front (RUF) interim leader Issa Sesay on Monday for his fighters to disarm the following day has sent more combatants rushing to UNAMSIL-run reception centres in Sierra Leone's eastern district of Kono, the government demobilisation agency reported.
The National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (NCDDR) reported on Wednesday that hundreds more fighters were expected to disarm immediately. "NCDDR and UNAMSIL (UN Mission in Sierra Leone) officials are currently working to adjust the disarmament and demobilisation process in Kono to cope with the surge," the committee reported.
UNAMSIL spokeswoman Margaret Novicki said on Tuesday she was optimistic that the disarmament of some 3,500 RUF and Civil Defence Forces (CDF) would be completed by 7 August. Fighting between CDF and RUF elements during the first half of July slowed the pace of disarmament in Kono, which began on 2 July. The NCDDR reported that it would set a date for the completion of disarmament in the district in consultation with a tripartite committee overseeing the process. The committee comprises the RUF, the government and UNAMSIL.
Disarmament in nearby Bonthe District, south of Kono, "has continued apace" after initial logistical difficulties, UNAMSIL reported. As at 30 July, 997 CFD had handed in their arms at Mattru and Sherbro Island, both located in the district.
SIERRA LEONE: RUF to help hunt down rogue commander
Revolutionary United Front (RUF) spokesman Gibril Massaquoi said on Tuesday that his movement would help UN peacekeepers find Demba Marrah, an RUF commander blamed for the death of between nine and 22 people in the northern village of Henekuma, Sierra Leone Web reported.
The private US-based news service reported Massaquoi as saying in a BBC broadcast that RUF interim leader Issa Sesay had sent a search party after Marrah with instructions to take him to Koidu for questioning.
The Henekuma killings occurred on 19 July. UNAMSIL Force Commander Lt-Gen Daniel Opande, who visited the area, promised to "have the culprits hunted down and brought to book". However, Massaquoi told the BBC that Marrah might have ordered the attack in retaliation for a CDF raid on his home town of Yiraia, Sierra Leone Web reported.
"After that attack he left Koidu to go and bury his people who were killed," it quoted Massaquoi as saying. He said that 28 people were killed in Yiraia, including Marrah's wife, his mother, two of his children and other relatives.
SIERRA LEONE: Canada pledges US $2.25 million for war crimes court
Canada announced on Tuesday it would donate US $2.25 million over three years toward the creation of the UN war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone.
The donation, announced by Foreign Minister John Manley and International Cooperation Minister Maria Minna, was the result of an appeal by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Some of it is to be used to pay for Canadian experts for the court and to help re-establish the rule of law in Sierra Leone, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) reported.
"Accountability for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes is an important part of Canada's human security agenda," Manley said. "By creating a venue for holding individuals accountable, the Special Court will help to break the cycle of conflict and lay the foundation for the promotion and protection of human rights in Sierra Leone."
Minna said: "The establishment of the special court will also send a powerful message, both in the country and internationally, that impunity will not be tolerated."
The court, to be based in the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, will judge individuals who bear the greatest responsibility for crimes such as murder, torture and sexual slavery, mutilation, hostage-taking, attacks on civilians and peacekeepers and child abuse committed from 30 November 1996.
The UN estimates it needs US $56.8 million to operate the court over three years. So far, the world body has received US $35.8 million in pledges, enough to cover the first year and part of the second and third.
SIERRA LEONE: Swedish grant for disarmament
Sweden has approved a six-million krona (US $566,824) grant to the World Bank Multidonor Trust Fund for a disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation programme in Sierra Leone, the Swedish government announced on Tuesday. It had earlier given 3.5 million krona (US $330,647) for a UN war crimes tribunal that is to be set up for Sierra Leone. "Both the special court and the programme for disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation are vital to the work of reconciliation," the Swedish government said.
WEST AFRICA: Swedish official becomes EU special envoy
The European Union (EU) has appointed Hans Dahlgren, the state secretary of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as its special envoy to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Swedish government reported on Tuesday.
It said Dahlgren would be responsible for framing a coordinated EU policy on the three countries. "Such a policy will include measures aimed at alleviating the serious humanitarian and political situation in the area," it reported.
Dahlgren will maintain close contact with the leaders of the three countries and promote cooperation with the UN and the Economic Community of West African States. He will support efforts at reconciliation among the three countries as well as conflict prevention, reconstruction and the nurturing of democracy.
In recent years, Guinea and Sierra Leone have had hostile relations with Liberia. The hostility has come close to direct confrontation between Guinea and Liberia, each of which accuses the other of aiding armed dissidents trying to topple its government. Liberia has also been accused of supporting rebels in Sierra Leone.
LIBERIA: WFP delivers food to IDPs in Bong
The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday it had completed the delivery of food in Liberia's Bong County to over 30,000 persons displaced by fighting between pro- and anti-government groups in neighbouring Lofa, in the north of the country.
"Since the massive displacement of people in Liberia, WFP has been providing all IDPs who fled the fighting with emergency food rations, but we are extremely concerned about those surviving in very unsafe conditions, and without help, in Lofa," Arnold Vercken, WFP's regional manager for West Africa, said.
Movement of aid workers in northern Liberia has been restricted by Lofa fighting. Moreover, in the affected areas, humanitarian agencies cannot monitor the distribution of relief items to ensure that they are not diverted to belligerents, WFP said.
LIBERIA: Amnesty denounces torture, killings and rape
Fighting in Liberia's northern county of Lofa is leading to "widespread and gross abuses against unarmed civilians", according to Amnesty International which, in a just-released report, urged the Liberian government and armed opposition groups to put an end to such practices.
Many civilians have been killed, arbitrarily detained, tortured and raped, Amnesty said in the report, titled 'Liberia: Killings, Torture and Rape Continue in Lofa County'.
"The scale of rape by security forces against women and girls - some as young as 12-years old - raises concerns that it's used as a weapon of terror in the civilian population," Amnesty said. It blamed the violations on Liberian government forces, including the Anti-Terrorist Unit, and other armed groups such as the anti-government Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy.
Amnesty also recommended that influential governments and organisations condemn and put pressure on Liberia's armed groups. It called on the UN to deploy human rights observers and urged the international community to provide aid, including medicine and psychosocial assistance, to victims.
For more on the report, go to: http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/AFR340092001?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\LIBERIA
GHANA: Two held with arms cache
Ghanaian police have arrested two men after finding fireams and ammunition hidden under the seats of a car in an Accra vehicle workshop, news organisations in Ghana reported.
Acting on a tip-off, police found 34 shotguns, one pump-action gun and 250 cartridges, the 'Daily Graphic' reported. The driver of the car, which had a Nigerian registration number, and a spray painter were arrested. Police quoted the driver as saying they were about to leave for Nigeria to sell the guns, the Accra newspaper reported.
It quoted the head of the police Criminal Investigations Department (CID) as saying that police believed weapons were being imported illegally for sale to buyers in Nigeria and Cote D'Ivoire, or to criminals in Ghana.
TOGO: Ex-minister sent to jail
Harry Octavianus Olympio, who was Togo's minister of human rights for 13 months, was sentenced on Tuesday to 18 months in jail and a fine equivalent to about US $480 for the "manufacture and illegal possession of weapons of war", media organisations reported. The case had been brought by the government after state security discovered, in June, stocks of arms and ammunitions at his party headquarters in Lome. Olympio had created his own party, le Rassemblement pour le soutien de la democratie et du developpement, after being dropped from the cabinet in May 2000.
COTE D'IVOIRE: Ex-junta leader to be set free
An ex-member of Cote d'Ivoire's former ruling military junta, General lansana Palenfo, was released from jail on Wednesday after the Supreme Court overturned one-year prison sentence a military tribunal imposed on him in March. Palenfo had been accused of threatening state security in connection with an attack in September 2000 on the home of former junta leader General Robert Guei.
The court said the military tribunal had no authority to try him because Article 110 of the new Ivorian constitution, adopted last year, says members of the 1999-2000 transition government can be tried only by the High Court for acts and violations committed during that period. The court, which is provided for by the constitution, has not yet been established by parliament. Palenfo spent four months in jail prior to being sentenced.
Another former junta member accused of the same offence, General Abdoulaye Coulibably, had been tried along with Palenfo but was acquitted in March.
Meanwhile, the trial of eight gendarmes accused of murder in connection with the discovery in October 2000 of 57 bodies in a field in the suburb of Yopougon, continued at a gendarmerie camp in Abidjan. The accused, who include a major, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday. Several witnesses were expected to take the stand on Wednesday.
CAMEROON: Gendarmes seize 300 copies of independent newspaper
Cameroonian gendarmes seized 300 copies of an independent newspaper, 'Mutations', on Monday and blocked its gates for hours, forcing staff to remain inside, Reporters sans frontières (RSF) said on Wednesday.
The gendarmes said they were looking for the newspaper's editor, Ahman Mana, in connection with the publication by 'Mutations' of 21 decrees on reforms to the army, signed into law on 26 July by President Paul Biya, RSF reported. Apparently, not all the decrees had been made public by the government and the gendarmes wanted to know who had leaked them to Mana. The editor, who later went to the gendarmerie, refused to reveal his sources, RSF said.
"Such hounding of an independent publication which has merely exercised its right to information has to stop, especially since these acts run counter to Cameroonian law with regard to freedom of the press," RSF Secretary-General Robert Menard said in a letter to Interior Minister Ferdinand Koungou Edima.
RSF also said the state-owned newspaper 'Cameroon Tribune' had been publishing the decrees daily in batches of two and three but had not been molested.
SAO TOME/PRINCIPE: Opposition candidate wins presidential poll
Businessman Fradique de Menezes has been declared winner of Sunday's presidential election in Sao Tome and Principe, Portuguese radio reported.
De Menezes polled 56.3 percent of the votes while 38.7 percent went to Prime Minister Manuel Pinto da Costa (president from 1975 to 1991), RDP reported, quoting the national electoral commission. This tally did not include 6,214 voters registered overseas.
RDP said 37.65 percent of the archipelago's 61,159 voters abstained.
Fradique de Menezes was supported by a number of parties, including the biggest opposition group, Independent Democratic Action (ADI). Prime Minister Pinto da Costa was backed by the ruling Movement for the Liberation of Sao Tome and Principe - Social Democratic Party (MLSTP-PSD). There were three other candidates.
De Menezes is to be sworn in on 3 September, RDP said.
Sao Tome and Principe is an archipelago with a population of about 142,000 off the coast of Gabon. It became independent from Portugal in 1975 under Pinto da Costa who, in 1991, lost the first multiparty presidential election to ADI's Miguel Trovoada.
Trovoada was re-elected in 1996, but Pinto da Costa's MLSTP-PSD won legislative polls in 1994 and 1998.
Abidjan, 1 August 2001; 18:36
[ENDS]
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