French troops were on Monday handing back a military base in northeastern Mali ahead of a final withdrawal from the Sahel nation, France’s army said, after nine years fighting a jihadist insurgency.

And the UN’s emissary there warned that their withdrawal could leave Menaka, where they were based, vulnerable to a jihadist attack.

The departure from the Menaka base “was conducted in good order, safely and in transparent fashion”, said French army spokesman General Pascal Ianni in Paris.

It comes ahead of the last withdrawal from Mali “at the end of the summer” when France’s main military base at Gao will be returned to Malian forces, he added.

But El-Ghassim Wane, the UN Secretary General’s special representative in Mali, warned that the pull-out could spell trouble for Menaka.

He had visited the town two weeks ago, he said, and people there he had spoken to “did not rule out an attack on Menaka town”, where 5,000 people forced to flee the violence in the region had taken shelter.

“Should this scenario come to pass, the MINUSMA base is likely to be perceived as the last haven for civilians fleeing violence,” Wane added, referring to the base of the UN peacekeeping force in Mali.

But he warned: “With minimal Malian forces in the area and some 600 peacekeepers available to protect civilians, UN personnel and assets, MINUSMA’s ability to mount an effective response is limited.”

Deteriorating relations

Former colonial ruler France set up the Menaka outpost in 2018 in the wild tri-border zone where Mali meets Niger and Burkina Faso. It housed French and European special forces under the name Takuba tasked with training up local troops.

General Ianni told journalists the Takuba operation would not be transferred to neighbouring Niger.

France launched anti-jihadist operations in the Sahel in 2013, helping Mali snuff out a revolt in the north.

But the jihadists regrouped to attack the volatile centre of the country, initiating a fiery insurgency that elected president Ibrahim Bubacar Keita was unable to crush.

In August 2020, protests against Keita culminated in a coup by disgruntled colonels — followed by a second military takeover in May 2021.

From then on, relations with France went steadily downhill, propelled by the junta’s resistance to setting an early date to restore civilian rule and by Bamako’s charges that France was inciting the region to take a hard line against it.The bust-up accelerated in 2021 as the junta wove closer ties with Moscow, bringing in “military instructors” that France and its allies condemned as mercenaries hired from the pro-Kremlin Wagner group.

France not quitting Sahel

The French operation across the Sahel counted at its peak in 2020 some 5,500 troops before Paris started to reduce the numbers gradually and close the most forward bases at Kidal, Tessalit and Timbuktu in northern Mali.

Last January, the French ambassador to Bamako was expelled and the following month President Emmanuel Macron announced the total withdrawal from Mali as relations and security deteriorated.

However, the army said Monday that French forces were not quitting the Sahel region.

“The commitment to the struggle against terrorism, alongside the states of the region, at their request, remains an absolute priority,” the spokesman said.

Source: AFP

Over 800 militants of the extremist group Boko Haram were killed during recent operations on the fringes of Lake Chad by troops of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), commander of the force has said.

The operation dubbed “Lake Sanity” lasted for 75 days and included troops from Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger, said Major General Abdul Kalifa Ibrahim, commander of MNJTF.

“So far over 800 of Boko Haram criminals have been neutralized or killed. Over a quarter of these people were killed as a result of the work of the sector one of MNJTF, which is the Cameroonian sector. I find the discipline and the hard work of the Cameroonian sector to be one of the best,” Ibrahim told reporters during a press conference Wednesday evening.

“(Almost) three months operation, not one Cameroon soldier has died. This is a record,” he added during the press conference that presented battle-damage assessment of the operation.

He said, the MNJTF’s combined ground and amphibious operations have put a lot of pressure on the extremists, attacking their strongholds and making movement difficult for them.

MNJTF is a joint military effort created by countries including Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Benin to fight Boko Haram and the ISIS affiliate – West African Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), which threatens the stability of these countries and the entire region.

Source: Xinhuanet

Tunisia’s president sacked 57 judges on Wednesday, accusing them of corruption and protecting terrorists in a purge of the judiciary that comes as he seeks to remake the political system after consolidating one-man rule.

In a televised address President Kais Saied said he had “given opportunity after opportunity and warning after warning to the judiciary to purify itself”. Hours later the official gazette published a decree announcing the dismissals.

Among those sacked was Youssef Bouzaker, the former head of the Supreme Judicial Council whose members Saied replaced this year as he moved to take control of the judiciary.

The council had acted as the main guarantor of judicial independence since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution that introduced democracy and Saied’s changes prompted accusations he was interfering in the judicial process.

Another prominent judge on the list of those sacked was Bachir Akremi, whom some political activists accuse of being too close to the Islamist Ennahda party and of stopping cases against it. Ennahda and Akremi both deny that.

Last summer Saied dismissed the government and seized executive power in a move his foes called a coup before setting aside the 2014 constitution to rule by decree and dismissing the elected parliament.

He says his moves were needed to save Tunisia from crisis and his intervention initially appeared to have widespread public support after years of economic stagnation, political paralysis and corruption.

Saied, who has also replaced the independent electoral commission, has also said he will introduce a new constitution this month that he will put to a referendum next month.

However, nearly all Tunisia’s political parties have rejected the move along with the powerful UGTT labour union.

With Tunisia’s economy failing, and with public finances in crisis, Saied meanwhile faces the prospect of growing popular anger over high inflation and unemployment, and declining public services.

The UGTT said this week that public sector workers would go on strike on June 16, posing the biggest direct challenge to Saied’s political stance so far.

Source: REUTERS

Officials from Cameroon and Gabon began meeting on Tuesday in Cameroonian capital Yaoundé to discuss the border demarcation between the two countries.

“This meeting is a veritable platform for permanent consultation and reflection on questions linked to demarcation and security of the border of both countries. The outcome of this meeting will fill the legal vacuum that exists in that domain,” said Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji.

“This meeting will help us trace our border. (We need) to identify the reference side, register their geographical distinctions as well as all problems faced,” said Lambert-Noel Matha, Gabonese interior minister.

The two sides are expected to finalize a draft protocol on establishing a mixed technical committee to demarcate the border, the officials said, reiterating that there is no border dispute between the two countries.

Cameroon and Gabon share a border of about 300 km.

Source: Xinhaunet

Malian troops have discovered a mass grave close to military base French forces handed back to the Malian army just days ago in Gossi.

The Gossi military base in the north of the country was handed over to the Forces Armées Maliennes (FAMa) on Tuesday as part of the French forces’ planned exit from the country.

Paris plans to end its failed almost decade-long military operation under the pretext of eradicating terrorist groups wreaking havoc in the Sahel country.

The army general staff revealed in a statement that “bodies in a state of advanced putrefaction were discovered in a mass grave, not far from the camp formerly occupied by the French force Barkhane.”

“The state of advanced putrefaction of the bodies indicates that this mass grave existed well before the handover. Consequently, the responsibility for this act can in no way be attributed to the FAMa,” the statement said.

The defense ministry has been assigned to conduct an investigation into the mass killings.

France and the United States were quick to blame Russian forces deployed in Mali for the killings.

The French army claimed Russian fighters buried bodies near the Gossi base with the intention of framing the French for the killings, according to French and American news agencies.

Leaders of West Africa’s Sahel region have abandoned their hopes in purported counter-terrorism efforts by France and started negotiating with armed militants to bring peace to the restive region.

France’s exit from Mali came as swathes of territory remained under the control of rebel militants linked to al-Qaeda and Daesh.

The Sahel, a semi-arid stretch of land south of the Sahara desert, has been in turmoil since 2012, when a number of armed separatists started targeting the local population in Mali.

As a former colonial power seeking significant military presence in Africa, France decided to send thousands of soldiers in 2013 to try to prevent separatist forces from reaching Mali’s capital, Bamako.

France increased the number of its forces in the Sahel from 600 to 5,100 soldiers for its Operation Barkhane last year.

However, the military boost failed to bring the situation under control and the UN also deployed its peacekeeping forces to the region.

Militant groups with links to al-Qaeda and Daesh have strengthened their foothold across the region.

This has made the territory ungovernable, stoking ethnic violence, especially in neighboring countries Mali and Burkina Faso. The French Barkhane force is also involved in Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, and Mauritania.

Culled from Presstv

Four French tourists and one Belgian were among 10 people killed in a bus crash Wednesday in Egypt, whose travel industry is only just emerging from years of political upheaval and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fourteen others — eight French and six Belgians — were taken to hospital with “broken bones, bruises and superficial injuries” but all were in a stable condition, the governor of the southern province of Aswan said.

The other five people killed were all Egyptian — the bus driver, his assistant and the tour guide, as well as two people in the other vehicle, a statement from the public prosecution said.

The Belgian foreign ministry confirmed to AFP that one of its citizens died and others were injured.

The accident occurred early Wednesday morning when the bus collided with a pick-up as it was transporting the tourists on the 300 kilometre (186 mile) road journey between Aswan and the famed Abu Simbel temple further south.

An AFP photographer saw what remained of the burnt-out vehicles lying by the roadside.

The prosecution ordered an “urgent investigation” to determine “the cause and circumstances of the accident and those responsible”.

Crashes are relatively common in Egypt, where many roads are in disrepair and traffic regulations frequently ignored.

Some 7,000 people died in road accidents in the country in 2020, according to official figures.

Vital tourism industry

The Abu Simbel temple was moved from its original location in the 1960s under the rule of president Gamal Abdel Nasser to make way for the construction of the Aswan High Dam.

Egypt had begun reviving its vital tourism industry by promoting its ancient heritage, after the country’s 2011 revolution and ensuing unrest struck the sector.

But the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the subsequent global travel bans resulted in a plunge in tourism revenues to $4 billion, from $13 billion the previous year.

The sector employs some two million people in a country of 103 million and generates more than 10 percent of GDP.

In August 2021 Russia resumed flights to Egyptian resorts, six years after a Russian airliner crashed after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has yet again cut off much of the flow of tourists to Egypt, as the two countries accounted for about 40 percent of visitors prior to the war.

The current administration of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has invested heavily in promoting tourism, and has organised major events in a bid to attract visitors.

Last year, the North African country staged a procession of floats carrying the mummified remains of 22 pharaohs, including Egypt’s most powerful ancient queen, to a new resting place in Cairo.

Since the start of April, visitors from dozens of additional countries have been permitted to obtain visas on arrival to Egypt, rather than applying in advance.

While attacks on tourists have largely ceased since they peaked in the 1990s, deadly incidents have occurred.

And in February 2019, a German woman and two Egyptian children were killed when a building collapsed in a residential neighbourhood of the southern city of Luxor.

Source: AFP

Burkina Faso’s former president Blaise Compaoré was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment over his role in the 1987 murder of his predecessor Thomas Sankara, a military court ruled on Wednesday, wrapping up a six-month trial that was disrupted by a coup.

An iconic figure sometimes dubbed the “African Che Guevara”, Sankara was just 33 when he came to power in a coup in 1983, setting in motion a revolution that pledged to “decolonise African minds” and continues to inspire followers across the continent.

The short-lived experiment came to a brutal end on October 15, 1987, when he and 12 colleagues were gunned down by a hit squad during a meeting at the presidential palace in Ouagadougou. The massacre coincided with a coup that took Sankara’s erstwhile comrade Compaoré to power.

On Wednesday, the special court in Ouagadougou ruled that Compaoré was guilty of complicity in Sankara’s murder, sentencing him and his former head of security, Hyacinthe Kafando, to life in jail.

Prosecutors had demanded a 30-year jail term for Compaoré, who was deposed in a 2014 popular uprising and now lives in exile in neighbouring Ivory Coast since his ouster. The former president, who denounced a “political trial”, was tried in absentia on counts of attacking state security, concealing a corpse and complicity in a murder.

Throughout his 27-year reign, Compaoré clamped a tight lid on the circumstances of Sankara’s demise, fuelling speculation that he was the mastermind. It was only after his ouster in a popular uprising in 2014 that Sankara’s remains were exhumed, paving the way for the long-waited trial.

International ‘conspiracy’

One of the world’s poorest countries, Burkina Faso has a long history of political turmoil and is battling a jihadist insurgency that has claimed some 2,000 lives and displaced up to 1.8 million people.

Reflecting the turmoil, the trial was briefly suspended after a coup on January 24 that deposed the elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. It resumed after a new military strongman, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, restored the constitution and swore an oath.

Tensions between Sankara and his erstwhile ally Compaoré were described in detail during the six-month proceedings, with several witnesses pointing to an “international conspiracy” to remove a troublesome leader who was not afraid to challenge the world order and rebuke France, the former colonial power.

“The tragedy of October 15, 1987 was a result of pressure exerted by a number of heads of state, including Félix Houphouët Boigny,” said Abdoul Salam Kaboré, a sports minister under Sankara, referring to Ivory Coast’s former ruler and a key French ally.

Speaking via video-link from France, Sankara’s former close aide Moussa Diallo said there was no doubt the assassination “was premeditated” and that Houphouët Boigny “was at the heart of the plot”.

The longtime Ivorian leader once told Sankara, “[y]ou have to change, and if you don’t, we will change you,” Serge Théophile Balima, a former head of Burkina Faso’ state TV, testified in court.

In its closing statement, the prosecution recounted in grim detail the day Sankara was murdered by a hit squad that burst into a meeting of his National Revolutionary Council meeting, killing his guards.

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

Ballistics experts told the trial Sankara had been shot in the chest at least seven times by assassins using tracer rounds. At least one bullet was fired in his back.

The defendants had claimed the victims died in a botched attempt to arrest Sankara after he and Compaore fell out over the direction the country’s revolution was taking.

During the trial, “none of the accused confessed or repented – not a single one!” said Prosper Farama, a lawyer representing the Sankara family, adding that the family wanted “justice, not revenge”.

‘Pride of Africa’

While Sankara’s death put an end to his revolution, the premature and brutal manner of his demise would help cement the legend of a progressive leader who sought to empower the people in a continent blighted by colonial plunder and mismanagement.

Sankara followed in the footsteps of previous pan-African icons, including the likes of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of Congo, historian Amzat Boukari-Yabara told FRANCE 24 at the start of the trial.

“His originality was to defend the principle of people’s emancipation, rather than the emancipation of states. He called on the people of Africa to join forces around regional struggles, such as fighting desertification, and around continental challenges, like ending debt bondage,” Boukari-Yabara explained.

“On matters of governance, women’s rights, fighting forced marriage and female gential mutilation, climate and culture, he was a pioneer,” he added. “His assassination clearly marked the end of revolutionary pan-Africanism.”

The man who renamed the former French colony of Haute-Volta as Burkina Faso – meaning the “Land of the Honest”, or “Upright” – was ahead of his time in recognising climate change and desertification as the single biggest threat to the wellbeing of its people.

“The desert is at our gates, it’s already upon us, ready to engulf us,” he warned as he launched a massive tree-planting drive to “regreen” the country, halt soil erosion and foster sustainable agriculture. More than three decades after his death, his vision of a “wall of trees” holding back the encroaching desert has taken root in a pan-African project of breathtaking scale, a cross-continental barrier stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

None of this was possible without the liberation of women, Sankara would stress in his fiery speeches up and down the country, pointing out that women “carry the other half of the sky” – on top of the wood that fuels stoves and cookers and the water that feeds their families, their crops and their livestock.

“May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence,” he once said. “I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.”

That spirit has outlived Burkina Faso’s revolutionary captain, said Serge Ouédraogo, a high-school teacher in the capital, Ouagadougou – outshining the darker aspects of Sankara’s legacy, including his efforts to silence dissenters.

“Sankara is a whole philosophy, a way of thinking and living. He’s the pride of Africa,” Ouédraogo told AFP. “Today we can say that Sankara is a compass for the people of Burkina Faso. He’s a guide, the one who charts a path of hope for the people.”

Source: France 24

At least twelve soldiers were killed Sunday in eastern Burkina Faso by suspected jihadists, security sources told AFP, the sixth attack of its kind in the country in ten days.

“On Sunday, armed elements attacked a (military) unit around Natiaboani. The provisional toll is twelve fallen soldiers,” a security source told AFP.

“This was a patrol and security team that were attacked by presumed jihadists,” another security source told AFP, adding that around ten soldiers had been killed.

“Multiple elements on the enemy side were also neutralised,” they said, without giving further details.

Natiaboani is a rural community about sixty kilometres south of Fada N’Gourma, the largest town in the Eastern Region administrative area that since 2018 has been regularly targeted by armed groups.

Around 15 youths were kidnapped by armed individuals during an attack on Friday in nearby Nagre, according to the country’s information agency.

Burkina Faso has seen an uptick in violence after a period of relative calm following a military junta taking power in January.

Disgruntled officers toppled elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who had been facing protests over his handling of the bloody jihadist insurgency.

In total, 23 civilians and 25 policemen or soldiers have been killed over the last ten days.

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.

The violence has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced at least 1.7 million, according to an AFP tally.

In January alone, 160,000 fled their homes, a group of international charities said last Thursday.

Source: AFP

Mali’s army-led government asked France on Friday to withdraw its troops from the Sahel state “without delay”, calling into question Paris’ plans to pull out over several months.

A government spokesman added in a statement announced on public television that the results of France’s nine-year military engagement in conflict-torn Mali were “not satisfactory”.

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he was withdrawing troops from Mali after a breakdown in relations with the nation’s ruling military junta.

Relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply after Mali’s army seized power in a coup in 2020, and later defied calls to restore civilian rule swiftly.

The French pullout after nearly a decade is also set to see the smaller European Takuba force of special forces, created in 2020, leave Mali.

France currently has some 5,000 troops deployed across the Sahel as part of its anti-jihadist Barkhane force — the majority  in Mali.

Macron said the withdrawal would take place over four to six months.

Spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga called the French withdrawal a “flagrant violation” of accords between the two countries.

“In view of these repeated breaches of defence agreements, the government invites the French authorities to withdraw, without delay,” he said.

Source: AFP

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