France’s top court on Tuesday confirmed that a probe should be closed into the shooting down of a presidential plane that triggered the 1994 Rwanda genocide, ending a two-decade legal saga.

The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal by families of people killed in the missile attack on president Juvenal Habyarimana’s aircraft on April 6, 1994.

They had asked judges to reverse a lower court’s decision to abandon the case against people close to current President Paul Kagame.

Relations between Paris and Kigali had long been strained by the probe and its associated arrest warrants.

“The investigation was complete and sufficient charges did not exist against anyone for committing the alleged crimes, nor any other infraction,” the Court of Cassation found.

The Falcon 50 plane was carrying Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira from a summit in Tanzania, where they had been discussing the crisis in the two countries and continuing negotiations with Kagame, then leader of the mostly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR).

Its downing is widely seen as the spark that ignited the genocide in which more than 800,000 people are believed to have died — most from the Tutsi minority at the hands of Hutus.

Rwanda’s representative at the UN said at the time that the plane was shot down by “enemies of the peace,” while the defence ministry said “unidentified elements” were responsible.

Relatives of the French flight crew turned to the courts in 1998.

French investigators long suspected that Kagame’s rebels fired on the flight as it landed in the Rwandan capital.

Later they chased up the theory that Hutu extremists unsatisfied with the moderate Habyarimana were behind the attack, with no more success.

But a French expert report found in 2012 that the plane was hit by missiles fired from a camp occupied by Habyarimana’s own presidential guard.

Defending their dropping the case in December 2018, the investigating magistrates said there was a “lack of indisputable material evidence,” and this left the charges resting on witness accounts that were “mostly contradictory or impossible to verify.”

They also underlined the “detrimental atmosphere” around the case, including killings, disappearances of witnesses and manipulation of testimony.

Source: AFP

Military prosecutors on Tuesday called for a 30-year jail term against Burkina Faso’s former president Blaise Compaore for the 1987 murder of his predecessor, revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara.

The closely-followed trial is heading to a climax as the West African nation reels from its latest coup, following popular anger over jihadist attacks.

Prosecutors asked a military court in the capital Ouagadougou to find Compaore, who fled to Ivory Coast in 2014, guilty on several counts.

Accused of masterminding the assassination, Compaore is being tried in absentia on charges of attacking state security, concealing a corpse and complicity in a murder.

At the request of the defence, the trial was then adjourned until March 1.

Revered among African radicals, Sankara was an army captain aged just 33 when he came to power in a coup in 1983.

The fiery Marxist-Leninist railed against imperialism and colonialism, often angering Western leaders but gaining followers across the continent and beyond.

He and 12 colleagues were gunned down by a hit squad on October 15, 1987, at a meeting of the ruling National Revolutionary Council.

Their assassination coincided with a coup that brought Sankara’s former comrade-in-arms, Compaore, to power.

Compaore ruled for 27 years before being deposed by a popular uprising in 2014 and fleeing to neighbouring Ivory Coast.

Fourteen people stand accused in the trial, 12 of them appearing in court. Most pleaded not guilty.

The prosecution also requested 30 years in jail for the commander of Compaore’s presidential guard, Hyacinthe Kafando, who is suspected of having led the hit squad. He is also being tried in absentia.

It sought a 20-year sentence for Gilbert Diendere, one of the commanders of the army during the 1987 coup and the main defendant present at the trial.

Compaore’s former right-hand man, General Gilbert Diendere, is already serving a 20-year for engineering an attempted putsch in 2015

Compaore’s former right-hand man, General Gilbert Diendere, is already serving a 20-year for engineering an attempted putsch in 2015 OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT AFP

He is already serving a 20-year sentence over an attempted military coup in 2015.

Mariam Sankara, the slain ex-president’s wife, welcomed the prosecution’s plea.

“We’ve been waiting for years,” she said. Now “we’re waiting for the final verdict.”

‘Asking for justice’

The prosecution recounted the day Sankara was killed in its closing statement

It said that when Sankara headed to the National Revolutionary Council meeting, “his executioners were already there”.

According to its version of events, after Sankara entered the meeting room, the hit squad burst in, killing his guards.

“The squad then ordered president Sankara and his colleagues to leave the room. They would then be killed one by one,” the prosecution said.

The prosecution also urged prison sentences ranging from three to 20 years for five other defendants, as well as an 11-year suspended sentence for another.

It sought acquittal over lack of evidence for three of the accused, and cited the expiration of a statute of limitations for the final two.

The trial was already briefly suspended after a coup on January 24 that deposed the elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore.

After new military strongman Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba restored the constitution, the trial resumed last week.

Prosper Farama, the lawyer representing the Sankara family, said that, as the trial nears its end, the families were finally feeling some relief — even though “during this trial, no-one confessed or repented. No-one!”

“We ask the court to give the families justice,” he said. “We don’t want revenge, we’re simply asking for justice.”

Source: AFP

Sustained gunfire was heard on Tuesday near the seat of government in Bissau, the capital of the small coup-prone West African state of Guinea-Bissau, AFP reporters said.

Heavily-armed men surrounded the Palace of Government, where President Umaro Sissoco Embalo and Prime Minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam were believed to have gone to attend a cabinet meeting.

The Palace of Government is on the edge of the capital close to the airport.

People were seen fleeing the area, the local markets were closed and banks shut their doors, while military vehicles laden with troops drove through the streets.

Shortly after the first reports of the gunfire on Tuesday, the West African regional bloc ECOWAS condemned what it described as an attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau.

“ECOWAS is following with great concern the evolution of the situation in Guinea-Bissau…where military gunfire is taking place around the government palace,” the organisation said.

“ECOWAS condemns this attempted coup and holds the military responsible for the safety of President Umaro Sissoco Embalo and members of his government.”

The African Union (AU) said on it was very concerned about what it described as an attempted coup taking place and called on the military in Guinea-Bissau to free detained government members.

“The President of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, is following with grave concern the situation in Guinea-Bissau, consisting of an attempted coup against the country’s government,” the AU said in a statement.

“He calls on the military to return to their barracks without delay and to protect the physical safety of President Umaro Sissoco Embalo and members of his government and to immediately free those of them who are in detention,” it said.

A United Nations spokesman said on Tuesday that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “deeply concerned” by reports of heavy fighting in Guinea-Bissau and asks for an immediate end to the violence and for full respect of country’s democratic institutions.

The former Portuguese colony, just south of Senegal, is an impoverished coastal state of about two million people.

It has suffered four military putsches since gaining independence in 1974, most recently in 2012.

In 2014, the country vowed to return to constitutional government, but there has been little stability since then, and the armed forces wield substantial clout.

Embalo, a 49-year-old reserve brigadier general and former prime minister, took office in February 2020 after winning a second-round runoff election that followed four years of political infighting under the country’s semi-presidential system.

He was a candidate for a party called Madem, composed of rebels from the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) which had led Guinea-Bissau to independence.

His chief opponent, PAIGC candidate Domingos Simoes Pereira, bitterly contested the result but Embalo declared himself president without waiting for the outcome of his petition to the Supreme Court.

Late last year, the armed forces chief said members of the military had been preparing to launch a coup while the president was on a working trip to Brazil.

Troops had been offering bribes to other soldiers “in order to subvert the established constitutional order”, armed forces head General Biague Na Ntam said on October 14.

His account was denied the following day by the government spokesman.

In addition to volatility, Guinea-Bissau also struggles with a reputation for corruption and drug smuggling.

Its porous coastline and cultural ties have made it an important stop on the Africa trafficking route. In 2019, nearly two tonnes of cocaine were seized.

Three countries in West Africa – Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso – have experienced military takeovers in less than 18 months.

The region’s mounting instability is due to be discussed on Thursday at an ECOWAS summit.

Portugal’s embassy in Guinea-Bissau urged Portuguese citizens to stay at home amid Tuesday’s events.

“The Portuguese embassy in Guinea-Bissau recommends that all Portuguese citizens residing in Guinea-Bissau stay home and wait for further information due to recent events,” the embassy said on its Facebook page.

Source: REUTERS

A long-awaited trial in Burkina Faso over the 1987 assassination of revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara is being suspended until “the restoration of the constitution”, a court said Monday, a week after a military coup.

The trial of Sankara’s alleged killers was to resume at a military court in the capital Ouagadougou on Monday.

But Judge Urbain Meda announced the hearing was suspended and told parties “to remain alert for the resumption, which will be after the restoration of the constitution”.

He made the announcement after civil parties in the case called for a suspension pending “judicial normalisation” by Burkina’s new ruling junta.

“Civilian plaintiffs feel that a trial has to take place within a reasonable time, but we do not want a trial (with) flaws,” said lawyer Prosper Farama, representing the Sankara family.

The trial opened last October and has been closely followed by the Burkinabe public.

It has been showcased as the chance to shed light on one of the murkiest chapters in the troubled country’s history.

Revered among African radicals, Sankara was an army captain aged just 33 when he came to power in a coup in 1983.

The fiery Marxist-Leninist railed against imperialism and colonialism, often angering Western leaders but gaining followers across the continent and beyond.

He and 12 of his colleagues were gunned down by a hit squad on October 15, 1987, at a meeting of the ruling National Revolutionary Council.

Their assassination coincided with a coup that brought Sankara’s erstwhile comrade-in-arms, Blaise Compaore, to power.

Compaore ruled for 27 years before being deposed by a popular uprising in 2014 and fleeing to neighbouring Ivory Coast.

Fourteen defendants are on trial, two of them in absentia, including Compaore.

Compaore and his former right-hand man General Gilbert Diendere are charged with harming state security, complicity in murder, concealing bodies and witness tampering.

Compaore has repeatedly denied entrenched suspicions among Burkinabe that he ordered Sankara’s killing, while Diendere has pleaded not guilty.

On January 24, mutinous soldiers overthrew Compaore’s elected successor, Roch Marc Christian Kabore, amid rising public anger at his failure to stem a bloody jihadist insurgency.

They set up a military junta that has dissolved the government and parliament and suspended the constitution.

It has vowed to re-establish “constitutional order” within a “reasonable time”. It has also pledged to guarantee the “independence” of the judicial system.

But Farama argued that the independence of the court was guaranteed by the constitution.

As a result, hearings in the court should be suspended since the constitution itself has been suspended, he maintained.

Source: AFP

A court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has sentenced 51 people to death over the killing of two United Nations experts.

Michael Sharp from the US and Swedish Zaida Catalan were killed in 2017 in the volatile Kasai region while on mission for the UN.

The military court on Saturday convicted the defendants, who were almost all militia members, on multiple counts including terrorism, murder, participation in an insurrectional movement and war crime through mutilation.

Of the 54 suspects on trial, 22 fugitives were tried in absentia. Two defendants, including a journalist and a police officer, were acquitted.

The two UN experts were on a UN mission to investigate a conflict between government forces and an armed group in the central Kasai region in March 2017 when they were stopped on a road and executed summarily by the armed men in a nearby field.

Catalan was then decapitated.

The bodies of the two UN experts were found on March 28, 2017, days after they went missing.

Congolese officials have blamed the incident on the Kamuina Nsapu militias, who were in conflict from 2016 to mid-2017 with the Congolese army forces in the region.

However, the DR Congo has been the scene of deadly violence for decades with armed militant groups oftentimes raiding villages and killing civilians.

DR Congo is a mineral-rich country that produces diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, cassiterite (tin ore) and coltan, which is used in mobile phones, personal computers, automotive electronics, and cameras, as well as oil, coffee and timber.

Despite the abundance of natural wealth, the Congolese people live in poverty.  In 2019, DR Congo ranked 178th in Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

Sources

Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore has been detained, sources told FRANCE 24 on Monday, following heavy gunfire around his residence on Sunday night in the capital Ouagadougou.

Shots were heard late Sunday near Kabore’s home after soldiers staged mutinies at several barracks to demand the sacking of the country’s military top brass and more resources for the battle against Islamist insurgents.

Residents also reported they saw a helicopter above the the president’s home in the capital Ouagadougou.

It followed gunfire earlier Sunday at several army bases, prompting fears of yet another coup in a volatile West African country prone to military takeovers.

Source: France 24

A French soldier has died in an attack on the Barkhane military camp in Gao, northern Mali, President Emmanuel Macron’s office said in a statement on Sunday.

Macron’s office paid tribute to brigadier Alexandre Martin, who was killed in a mortar attack on Saturday.

More than 4,000 French forces are stationed in the Sahel region of West Africa, most of them in Mali.

France, which first deployed troops in the West African country nine years ago to fight a jihadist insurgency, has spent around €880 million a year on a mission that has cost 53 French soldiers their lives.

Paris has started reducing its presence, hoping to halve the contingent by the summer of 2023, and has asked its European Union allies to provide more support.

It is now mulling an earlier exit amid rapidly deteriorating relations with the military junta that has ruled the country since a coup in August 2020.

Source: REUTERS

Four French soldiers were wounded in an improvised explosive device blast in northern Burkina Faso, France’s military told AFP Tuesday evening.

“(Their) off-road vehicle activated an IED as it left Ouahigouya airport,” the army said in a statement, adding the unit was part of the Barkhane operation, Paris’ deployment in the Sahel against a jihadist insurgency.

Four soldiers were wounded, including one seriously, the army said, with the group either evacuated to Mali or France for those in a more serious condition.

Burkina Faso has been struggling with jihadist attacks since 2015, when militants linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group began mounting cross-border raids from Mali.

More than 2,000 people have died, according to an AFP toll.

The flashpoint “tri-border” area is frequently targeted by Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM) with deadly attacks against civilians and soldiers.

The French army has killed several high-ranking members of ISGS since the start of its military intervention in Mali in 2013.

But in June last year, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a major scaleback in the Barkhane mission to refocus on counter-terrorism operations and supporting local forces.

Source: AFP

Mali’s former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who led the West African country from 2013 until he was ousted in a coup in 2020, died at the age of 76 in Bamako Sunday, his family said.

Keita was two years into his second five-year term when in 2020 he faced widespread street protests against his government and was toppled by the military, which is now under regional sanctions for failing to restore civilian rule.

“President IBK died this morning at 0900 GMT in his home” in Bamako, a family member told AFP, using the former leader’s initials; several other family members confirmed his passing.

The cause of Keita’s death was not given.

In the weeks before the 2020 coup, he had been struggling with protests fuelled by his handling of a jihadist insurgency and failure to turn around Mali’s floundering economy.

Snail-paced political reforms, decrepit public services and schools, and a widely shared perception of government corruption also fed anti-Keita sentiment, driving tens of thousands of protesters into the streets.

Keita was forced out of office on August 18, 2020 by young military officers who staged an uprising at a base near Bamako before heading into the city, where they seized Keita and other leaders.

Under pressure from the West African bloc ECOWAS, the junta that emerged from the rebellion released Keita on August 27 and returned him to his residence in Bamako, under surveillance.

He suffered a mini-stroke the following month, and was sent to United Arab Emirates for treatment. 

Campaigning credentials

The ruling junta would stage another coup in May 2021.

ECOWAS this month agreed to sanction Mali after the junta proposed it would to stay in power for up to five years before staging elections – despite international demands that it respect a promise to hold the vote in February.

The son of a civil servant, Keita was born in the southern industrial city of Koutiala, the declining heartland of cotton production.

After studying literature in Mali, Senegal and France – his great-grandfather was a French colonial soldier who died in the Battle of Verdun in World War I – Keita became an adviser for the EU’s overseas development fund before heading a development project in northern Mali.

He campaigned against general Moussa Traore, Mali’s former president ousted in 1991 by a military coup.

He then rose through the ranks under Alpha Oumar Konare, the country’s first democratically elected president.

As a socialist prime minister between 1994 and 2000, he quelled a series of crippling strikes, earning a reputation as a firm leader and helping to set up his landslide election in 2013 – when he finally ascended to the presidency after losing runs in 2002 and 2007.

Source: AFP

Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara, who was gunned down during a coup in 1987, was shot at least seven times by assassins using tracer rounds, experts have told a long-awaited trial into his killing.

Sankara was struck by “at least seven rounds” in the chest, one of which was fired from behind, anatomical specialist Robert Soudre told a military court in the capital Ouagadougou on Wednesday.

A police ballistics expert, Division Commissioner Moussa Millogo said the bullets came from tracer rounds, “because of burns on the remains of clothing” that Sankara was wearing at the time.

Tracer rounds are ammunition which ignite a burning powder that lights up. The rounds are designed for fighting at night, to help the shooter mark the target.

Several calibres of bullet were found on Sankara’s remains, including 7.62 and 9mm rounds, Millogo said.

Sankara was an army captain aged just 33 when he came to power in a coup in 1983.

A fiery Marxist-Leninist, he railed against imperialism and colonialism, often angering Western leaders but gaining followers across Africa and beyond.

Sankara and 12 of his colleagues were gunned down by a hit squad on October 15 1987 at a meeting of the ruling National Revolutionary Council.

Their assassination coincided with a coup that brought Sankara’s erstwhile comrade-in-arms, Blaise Compaore, to power.

He ruled for 27 years before being deposed by a popular uprising in 2014 and fleeing to neighbouring Ivory Coast.

Compaore is on trial in absentia, charged like his former right-hand man General Gilbert Diendere with harming state security, complicity in murder, concealing bodies and witness tampering.

Compaore has persistently denied entrenched suspicions among Burkinabe that he ordered Sankara’s killing, while Diendere has pleaded not guilty.

Diendere has been separately handed a 20-year term for his part in a 2015 plot to overthrow the post-Compaore transitional government.

The trial, and details of what happened on the day of Sankara’s assassination, are being closely followed in the landlocked West African country.

– ‘Violent death’ intended –

Sankara remains a revered figure for many and his brutal death cast a pall over the country for decades. The circumstances of his killing were taboo under Compaore’s reign.

Fourteen men, including Compaore, are on trial in the proceedings, which began on October 11.

Prosper Farama, a lawyer for the Sankara family, said Wednesday’s testimony was revealing.

“When you listen to the experts, the type of weapons were used for assault that intended to inflict a violent death,” he said.

“When you’re told that these are tracer rounds, which ignite on contact, you cannot say that these are the types of weapons which are used to carry out an arrest.”

Sankara’s body was hastily disposed of after the killing and the authorities issued a death certificate saying that he had died of “natural causes.”

In May 2015, Sankara’s presumed remains and those of his companions were exhumed in May 2015 at a cemetery in Ouagadougou.

Autopsy results released in October 2015 said that Sankara’s supposed remains were “riddled with bullets.”

Source: AFP