A judge in the southern town of Ziguinchor on Thursday evening overturned the removal of imprisoned opposition politician Ousmane Sonko from Senegal’s electoral rolls, preventing him from standing as a presidential candidate, his lawyers and his dissolved party said.

Lawyers for Mr. Sonko, who came third in the 2019 presidential election, said their client could once again stand for election in February 2024. In a statement published by news websites, however, the State’s judicial agent said that the State would appeal against the judge’s decision and that Mr. Sonko could still not be a candidate.

On Thursday, Mr. Sonko’s lawyers challenged his disbarment before a court in Ziguinchor, the town where he is mayor and where he was registered. This action was presented by part of the press as representing the opponent’s last chance to stand as a candidate.

The court “declared Mr. Ousmane Sonko’s removal from the electoral rolls null and void and ordered his reinstatement, which should take immediate effect”, one of his defenders, Me Ciré Clédor Ly, said in a message on Friday.

“The Ziguinchor district court ruled on the law and only on the law  There was no justification for removing President Ousmane Sonko from the electoral rolls,” said El Malick Ndiaye, a leading figure in Mr. Sonko’s dissolved party.

Mr. Sonko was found guilty on June 1 of debauching a minor and sentenced to two years in prison. Having refused to appear at the trial, which he denounced as a plot to keep him out of the election, he was sentenced in absentia.

Mr. Sonko was imprisoned at the end of July on other charges, including calling for insurrection, criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise and undermining state security.

The authorities are questioning his responsibility in a series of protest episodes since 2021 – the most serious in June – which have resulted in several deaths.

Former Gabonese First Lady, Sylvia Bongo Ondimba, has been incarcerated at the central prison in Libreville, Gabon. She had been under house arrest since the military coup in late August, which accused her of embezzling public funds.
On September 28th, she was formally charged with “money laundering and forgery” and subsequently placed in provisional detention after a lengthy interrogation by a magistrate.

Sylvia Bongo’s lawyer, Me Gisèle Eyue-Bekale, obtained a ten-day postponement for a hearing to argue for her release. This development comes in the midst of an extensive investigation into alleged massive misappropriation of public funds involving Sylvia Bongo and her son, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, who is already in custody, along with six former senior officials from the presidential cabinet, according to consistent judicial sources.

The military that overthrew President Ali Bongo’s regime following accusations of election fraud publicly suspected the former First Lady and Noureddin of “manipulating” the former president, who suffered severe consequences from a stroke in 2018, and of being the “actual” de facto leaders of the country for the past five years.

The coup occurred on the night of August 30th, less than an hour after the announcement of Ali Bongo Ondimba’s reelection. The army declared the “end of the regime,” and General Brice Oligui Nguema, the coup leader, was proclaimed the president of the Transition two days later.

World Cup-winning former Spain coach Jorge Vilda has been appointed as the new boss of the Morocco women’s team.

The 42-year-old was sacked amid the fall-out after former Spanish federation president Luis Rubiales kissed Jenni Hermoso on the lips during the trophy ceremony in Australia.

Vilda was a controversial figure, with a number of Spain players refusing to be part of the World Cup squad under his management, and he was criticised for applauding Rubiales when he tried to defend himself before eventually resigning.

Vilda was strongly backed by Rubiales and had been rewarded for the World Cup success with a new contract before the pressure on both eventually told.

Morocco made their World Cup debut this year and reached the knockout stages, beating South Korea and Colombia before losing to France, but the services of coach Reynald Pedros have not been retained.

A statement on frmf.ma read: “The Royal Moroccan Football Federation contracted with the Spanish coach, Mr (Jorge Vilda), to coach the women’s national football team in the next stage, succeeding Mr Reynald Pedros, whose duties ended, with thanks extended to him for the work he accomplished during his mission at the helm of the women’s national football team, especially the qualification to the second round of the World Cup tournament.”

Since 2022, Morocco have recorded great success in football became the first African and Arab nation to reach a FIFA World Cup semi-final, while its women’s team reached their first-ever Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final. Moroccan clubs won all the continental cups on offer — in both men’s and women’s football.

U.N. officials say eight peacekeepers have been suspended and detained in eastern Congo on allegations of sexual exploitation.

U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric on Thursday told reporters in New York that, “upon receiving information that contingent members from the U.N. peacekeeping force in the DRC deployed at a base in the eastern part of the country were fraternizing, after curfew hours, at an out of bounds bar known to be a place where transactional sex occurs, the U.N. Mission’s military police and conduct and discipline personnel visited the premises to assess the reports they had received.”

“After confirming their presence and attempting to detain the contingent members for breaching the U.N.’s standards of conduct and the Mission’s non-fraternization policy,” he said, “U.N. Mission personnel were physically assaulted and threatened by the contingent members.”

Dujarric added that, “there is also evidence indicating a serious failure in the exercise of command and control by senior military officials belonging to that same contingent.”

The peacekeepers have been confined pending further details and a full investigation.

A U.N. official, who was not authorized to speak about the specifics of the case, told The Associated Press the eight peacekeepers are from South Africa and that they were detained in the city of Beni in North Kivu province after being caught with prostitutes at an unauthorized bar after curfew.

Mali’s ruling junta have cancelled the authorization given to French flag carrier Air France to resume operations and services to the country.

Two senior Malian officials and an air transport official gave the update on Wednesday less than 24hours after news went round that Air France will resume service to Mali from Friday.

“The decision was cancelled because the agreement was given without consulting the hierarchy,” said one official. Air France had announced on Tuesday that it would resume service to Mali from Friday .. after a two-month suspension amid tensions in the Sahel and between Bamako and Paris.

The earlier announcement indicated the resumption of flights would be carried by a third-party aircraft and crew. Air France had said in its announcement that the flights sold by Air France will no longer be operated by the company’s own aircraft, but by “a Boeing 777-200 ER belonging to Portuguese carrier EuroAtlantic Airways”.

It added that the crew will also be made up of employees of this company which, in addition to scheduled flights, offers charter and leasing services.

The airline had suspended its flights to Mali and Burkina Faso on August 7, following the closure of airspace in neighboring Niger, the scene of a coup d’état on July 26.

The initial suspension was just for several days, but after the airline extended the suspension, citing Niger’s coup and the “geopolitical situation” in the Sahel region, Malian authorities revoked Air France’s permit.

Relations between Mali and France have soured since a junta seized control in the West African country in 2020.

Nigeria has repatriated 310 of its nationals who were in Jordan after leaving Israel by road, where they were on a Christian pilgrimage, the Lagos State government announced on Tuesday.

“I am happy to announce that we have managed to repatriate by plane all 310 citizens who had gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo declared on X (ex-Twitter). -Olu.

These pilgrims were traveling from Bethlehem to Nazareth when they learned that an attack was underway in southern Israel, said Bukola Adeleke, special adviser for Christian affairs in that state and one of the leaders of the band.

“We were scared and everyone wanted to return to Nigeria, no one wants to die,” he told Africanewsguru.com after the group returned Tuesday morning.

The group – who were in Israel as part of a twice-yearly pilgrimage organized by the Lagos State government – and the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission organized their road trip to Jordan, from where they took off for Lagos on a specially chartered plane.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is divided almost evenly between the predominantly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south.

Israel announced on Tuesday that it had partially regained control of its border with the Gaza Strip, placed in a state of siege, after four days of a war against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which has already left more than 3,000 dead.

At least three civilians were killed on Monday in Sudan when shells fell on a hospital, a medical source said, as fighting between rival generals continued unabated.

“Shells fell on Al-Nau hospital in Omdourman, the northern suburb of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, the source told Africanewsguru.com.

Omdourman is the scene of violent fighting between the regular army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who have been at war since 15 April.

Human rights groups have accused both sides of targeting health facilities.

In August, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that Al-Nau hospital “is one of the last health facilities open in Omdourman”.

“It is also the only facility with an emergency trauma room or surgical capacity in northern Omdurman, where all the city’s wounded are brought”, said MSF.

According to the United Nations, more than 70% of the country’s hospitals are out of action.

They have been bombed or occupied by fighters, and the stocks of those that are still functioning have been exhausted or looted.

Although most of the fighting was confined to the capital and the western region of Darfur, it has spread to areas south of Khartoum, according to witnesses.

In the town of Jabal Awliya, 50 kilometres south of the capital, doctors “have had to stop all work at the hospital since yesterday evening because of heavy artillery shelling”, a doctor told our journalist “Dozens of wounded” remained in hospital, awaiting urgent treatment, he added.

To date, more than 9,000 people have been killed in the Sudanese conflict, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), which is widely considered to be an underestimate. Monday’s bombings came a day after fighting resumed in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, 350 kilometres south of Khartoum.

One child was killed and at least 16 others wounded in the fighting, while houses were destroyed, said a committee of pro-democracy lawyers who documented the massacres.

The UN estimates that nearly 5.5 million people have been displaced and made refugees by the fighting in Sudan.