31, March 2025
France: Marine Le Pen barred from running for public office for five years 0
France’s Marine Le Pen has been barred from running for office for five years after being found guilty of misappropriating European funds to finance her far-right National Rally (RN) party.
The momentous decision means Le Pen will likely not be able to stand in the 2027 French presidential election. It would have been her fourth attempt, and the one offering the greatest chance of victory.
Judges imposed immediate ineligibility with her conviction, meaning the ban on holding public office will now come into effect even if Le Pen appeals.
She has also been given a four-year prison sentence, of which two will be suspended. The other two can be spent with an electronic tag rather than in custody.
Le Pen has also been given a €100,000 (£82,635) fine.
She will very likely appeal the jail sentence, so it will not apply now.
At the start of the reading of the verdict, the judge, Bénédicte de Perthuis, said Le Pen had been at the “heart of the system” which saw the embezzlement of €2.9m worth of European funds.
Le Pen was accused, along with more than 20 other senior party figures, of hiring assistants who worked on her RN party affairs rather than for the European Parliament which paid them.
During the trial last year, Le Pen denied she had committed “the slightest irregularity”.
There has not yet been any comment from Le Pen, who left court before the sentence was issued alongside other defendants and headed to the RN’s Paris headquarters. She is expected to give an interview to French TV at 20:00 (19:00 BST).
At the weekend, Le Pen had told media that while she was “not nervous”, the judges had “the power of life or death over the [political] movement.”
Shortly before her sentencing, Le Pen received messages of support from the Kremlin, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Italy’s Matteo Salvini.
“It is not just Marine Le Pen who has been unfairly sentenced: it’s French democracy that has been executed,” Jordan Bardella, the president of the RN, wrote on X.
But some of Le Pen’s opponents have also stated they disapprove of the judge’s decision.
“The choice to dismiss an elected official should only belong to the people,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the far-left France Unbowed (LFI).
And Laurent Wauquiez, of the right-wing Republicans, said that the decision would “weigh very heavily on the functioning of our democracy”.
“It’s undoubtedly not the route that should have been taken.”
The reading of the verdict, which started shortly after 10:00 (09:00 BST), took nearly three hours.
Source: BBC
1, April 2025
Niger’s junta withdraws from Lake Chad anti-Boko Haram force 0
Niger’s ruling junta has quit a regional force fighting armed Islamist groups in west Africa’s Lake Chad area, cementing an acrimonious split from former allies in the region.
The decision to exit the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) was announced in a bulletin on state television over the weekend. The move “reflects a stated intent to reinforce security for oil sites”, the bulletin stated, without providing further details.
The MNJTF was formed in 2015 by Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria in the wake of increasing jihadist attacks across their territories. At its peak, it had an estimated 10,000 troops and fought many armed groups, especially Boko Haram and its offshoots. But any serious progress has been hampered or even undone by poor collaboration and equipping, analysts say.
“The force was never that effective, said Ulf Laessing, the Bamako-based director of the Sahel programme at Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German thinktank. Its decline, he added, was “good news for jihadists and it is bad news for villagers on the lake side, fishers or farmers who just want to go about their business but who will now get less military support”.
Niger’s exit from MNJTF came days after the junta’s leader, Abdourahmane Tiani, was sworn in as president until 2030 under a new charter that suspended the constitution and dissolved all political parties.
Niger has also isolated itself from the Economic Community of West African State (Ecowas), after Ecowas imposed a range of sanctions following the coup that ousted the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, in July 2023.
Within two months of the coup, it had joined the splinter Alliance of Sahel States (AES) along with Burkina Faso and Mali, where there have also been military takeovers since 2020.
Since then, AES has introduced new biometric passports to replace the old regional passports and on Monday, it announced a 0.5% levy on imported goods from Ecowas states.
Ikemesit Effiong, managing partner at Nigerian geopolitical risk advisory SBM Intelligence, said the levy put an end to “a long history of free trade across the western Sahel” and could change the dynamics of Ecowas’s negotiations with AES.
“When squared with Ecowas’s statement commitment to keep open trade and borders with AES states, I think this [levy] will force Ecowas to drop its kid gloves strategy and be more forceful with the AES,” Effiong said.
It remains unclear what impact Niger’s withdrawal from the MNJTF will have on a security agreement signed with neighbouring Nigeria last August. The countries share a border that spans 1,000 miles but Nigeria-led Ecowas’s push for a rapid return to democratic governance has caused friction between both countries.
Effiong said recent moves in the capital, Niamey, which has been seeking new military and economic partners since expelling French troops in 2023, are unsurprising.
“Niger has been pulling out of all its main regional bilateral and multilateral commitments, much of which it sees as western influenced or inspired,” said Effiong, who noted that MTNJTF had received military and intelligence aid from western partners in the past.
Source: The Guardian