Month: November 2023

Former Ivorian Prime Minister Guillaume Soro declared on Sunday evening that he would put an end to his exile, which began in 2019. However, he did not specify a date for his potential return to his home country, where he faces a life sentence.

“I announce here and now that I am ending my exile because it is painful for me to live far from my ancestral and native land in Africa,” stated Mr. Soro in a five-minute address posted on his social media account.

In the video, where he appeared in a suit and tie with a graying beard, the 51-year-old Mr. Soro claimed that there was an attempt to apprehend him at Istanbul’s airport on November 3, with the intent of extraditing him to Côte d’Ivoire. He reassured that he is in “very good health.”

He also detailed his travels over the past few years, which took him to France, Belgium, Dubai, and “to the far reaches of the Asian continent.” He accused Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara of initiating an international manhunt against him.

“I will not go any further into exile; I refuse to be a fugitive. I am not guilty of any wrongdoing,” he continued, expressing his desire to “contribute to the reconciliation of the sons and daughters of Côte d’Ivoire.”

Mr. Soro did not specify a date for a potential return to Côte d’Ivoire.

Guillaume Soro, who led the rebellion that controlled the northern half of the country in the 2000s, had militarily supported Alassane Ouattara’s rise to power during the post-electoral crisis of 2010-2011, when the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to concede defeat.

He subsequently became Mr. Ouattara’s first prime minister and later the president of the National Assembly in 2012. However, their relationship soured in early 2019, reportedly due to Mr. Soro’s presidential ambitions.

While already in exile, Guillaume Soro was sentenced in absentia in Abidjan in June 2021 to life imprisonment for “endangering state security” and accused of inciting a “civil and military insurrection” aimed at overthrowing Mr. Ouattara’s regime in 2019. His appeal was deemed inadmissible.

In April 2020, he had previously been sentenced to 20 years in prison for embezzlement. This conviction led to the invalidation of his candidacy in the 2020 presidential election, which Mr. Ouattara won.

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) had ordered Abidjan to suspend its arrest warrant against Mr. Soro in that case. However, Ivorian authorities claimed that the ACHPR’s decisions infringed on the sovereignty of Côte d’Ivoire and its judicial authority.

In May of this year, Mr. Soro had asserted that “no reason” prevented him from running in the next presidential election, scheduled for 2025.

His political movement, Générations et peuples solidaires (GPS), was dissolved in Côte d’Ivoire in June 2021.

Senegal’s President Macky Sall has ordered emergency measures to be taken to stem the growing flow of migrants taking to canoes to reach Europe, his office said on Wednesday evening.

Mr. Sall asked the government on Wednesday “to take emergency security, economic, financial and social measures to neutralize the departure of emigrants from the national territory”, said a communiqué issued after the Council of Ministers.

The effort will involve the Ministers of the Interior, the Armed Forces, Youth and Fisheries, according to the communiqué, which also refers to the national strategy to combat irregular migration presented by the government in July.

Senegal, a West African country that President Sall is striving to put on the road to emergence, is facing a flood of departures by sea bound for the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago and gateway to Europe.

Several times a week, the press reports arrivals of pirogues in the Canaries, interceptions or rescues in the Atlantic, off Senegal or in the waters approaching the Canaries. This dangerous migration has led to a series of tragedies.

Since the beginning of the week, the press has again been reporting the disappearance of a considerable number of migrants from Bargny, on the coast east of Dakar. Africanewsguru.com has been unable to obtain confirmation of these disappearances from the authorities.

The migration issue has become a theme in the ongoing campaign for the February 2024 presidential election. Prime Minister Amadou Ba is the presidential camp’s candidate to succeed Mr. Sall.

The Canary Islands have seen a record number of migrant arrivals since 2006, with 30,705 people arriving between January 1 and October 31, more than double (+111%) the figure for the same period last year, according to the latest figures from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior.

Two-thirds are from sub-Saharan Africa, according to the European coastguard and border guard agency Frontex. Senegalese, along with Moroccans, are the most numerous new arrivals, according to Frontex and several Spanish NGOs.

A 43-year-old man has been shot dead in Nigeria’s Bauchi state while testing a bullet-proof charm, according to police spokesman Ahmed Wakil.

The traditional healer who fired the shot with a locally made gun has been arrested, along with two others, while additional suspects remain at large.

The victim has been identified as Muhammadu Ali, a villager from the area. Police responded swiftly upon learning of the incident and rushed Mr. Ali to the hospital, but he was declared dead upon arrival.

Supt Wakil cautioned the public against becoming unwitting participants in such dangerous experiments. Investigations are ongoing, and the suspects will face charges in court once the process is completed.

Bullet-proof charms with alleged magical properties are commonly used in Nigeria, with many people seeking assistance from traditional healers for various concerns. However, there have been multiple instances of fatalities resulting from tests of these charms and medicines.

The Ethiopian government and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) are holding new talks in Tanzania to try and put an end to five years of insurrection in Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest and most populous region, a diplomatic source said on Wednesday.

Classified as a “terrorist organization” by Addis Ababa, the OLA has been fighting the Ethiopian authorities since it split with the historic Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in 2018, when the latter renounced armed struggle that year when current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power.

“Talks have been underway for ten days” in Tanzania, the diplomat told Africanewsguru.com on condition of anonymity, adding that the main mediation was being carried out by Igad, the East African bloc.

“It’s going very well. Both parties are optimistic about a (future) agreement”, he said.

A first round of talks, between late April and early May, had ended in persistent disagreement. Despite the declared willingness of the parties to continue talks, ten days later the OLA accused the Ethiopian government of having launched an offensive contrary to the “hoped-for de-escalation”.

Many observers describe the OLA as a “franchise” to which relatively autonomous groups – some with criminal motives – belong, rather than as a hierarchically structured movement under a central command.

Estimated at a few thousand men in 2018, the OLA’s strength has grown considerably in recent years. However, observers consider it insufficiently organized and armed to represent a real threat to federal power in Addis Ababa, even though the capital is surrounded by Oromia.

The region of the Oromo people stretches from center to south and east to west, covering around a third of Ethiopia’s territory, and is home to around a third of the 120 million inhabitants of Africa’s 2nd most populous country.

It is plagued by multi-faceted violence, making the situation extremely confused: internal political struggles, territorial disputes, and animosities between communities combined with the recent development of armed banditry.

In recent years, it has been the scene of ethnic massacres – the perpetrators of which are not identified – particularly in the Wollegas, a remote area in the far west, where they mainly target the Amhara, the second most numerous people in Ethiopia, but a tiny minority in Oromia.

The OLA has been repeatedly accused by the government of being responsible for these massacres, a charge it systematically denies. The government, for its part, is accused of indiscriminate repression, which fuels Oromo resentment against the federal government.

In addition to Oromia, Ethiopia is torn apart by numerous unrelated conflicts, often linked to identity claims or territorial disputes.

The Constantine court on Tuesday sentenced Franco-Algerian opponent Amira Bouraoui to 10 years in prison in absentia, and to six months the journalist Mustapha Bendjama, accused of having helped her escape to France, according to Algerian media. and Khaled Drareni, representative of Reporters Without Borders.

The prosecution had requested 10 years in prison against Ms. Bouraoui and three years against the journalist, who given the time already spent in preventive detention, can be released immediately, Mr. Drareni said on X (formerly Twitter).

Amira Bouraoui, a trained doctor aged 46, was on trial for “illegally leaving the territory” after crossing the border between Algeria and Tunisia on February 3, defying an exit ban, before being arrested in Tunis while she was trying to board a flight to Paris.

The activist was finally able to fly to France three days later, despite an attempt by Tunisian authorities to send her back to Algeria.

Algiers had described its flight as an “illegal exfiltration” carried out with the help of French diplomatic and security personnel, and had recalled its ambassador to Paris for consultations. This diplomatic quarrel was resolved in March.

Ms. Bouraoui became known in 2014 for her involvement in the +Barakat+ movement against the fourth term of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, before getting involved in the “Hirak” protest movement and working for the independent private radio station Radio M.

The court in Constantine (north-east) also sentenced Ali Takaida, a border police agent, to three years in prison and a one-year suspended prison sentence to Ms. Bouraoui’s mother, Khadidja, aged 71, according to the same sources.

The activist’s co-defendants were prosecuted for “constitution of a criminal association, illegal exit from the national territory, organization of illegal immigration by an organized criminal network”.

Mustapha Bendjama was arrested on February 8 in the premises of the French-speaking newspaper Le Provincial, based in Annaba (east), of which he is editor-in-chief, in the context of the Bouraoui affair.

He was sentenced on October 26 in another case to 20 months in prison, eight of which were served alongside Algerian-Canadian researcher Raouf Farrah, who was released after serving the same sentence.