News

17, March 2020

Ambazonia leader, top aides to face French Cameroun judges at the Yaounde Appeal Court ⁰

The Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides are expected to be back in court on Thursday for the first time after they were handed a life sentence by the Yaoundé Military Tribunal.

Cameroon Concord News understands the defiant leader will take his place in the dock behind his defense lawyers at the Yaounde Appeal Court’s trial without any of the French Cameroun government fake witnesses giving testimony.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his cabinet are being held by a regime that is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Southern Cameroons.

But saying he was ready to die for the people of the Federal Republic of Ambzonia, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe alongside what is now referred to in Southern Cameroons political terminology as the NERA 9 ended their hunger strike while in detention and were later on sentenced to life in prison by a French Cameroun judge whose husband is a blood relation to President Biya.

The Ambazonian leader has denied all the charges concocted by the Francophone regime in Yaounde against him and members of his government.

Southern Cameroons has been mired for four years in a Biya French Cameroun-charged war, as Cameroon government army soldiers and Ambazonia Restoration Forces battle for control of the mineral rich territory.

By Chi Prudence Asong with additional editing from Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap in Glasgow

16, March 2020

French Cameroun: National Assembly Speaker may be nation’s 6th coronavirus case ⁰

The Speaker of the National Assembly, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril has not been diagnosed with coronavirus. But needed to have been self-isolating at home in Yaoundé upon his return from France-a country that recently confirmed its coronavirus outbreak is “very worrying” and “deteriorating very fast”.

Supported by two men, the 80 year old speaker of the National Assembly, the Right Honourable Cavaye Yeguie Djibril arrived Yaoundé from his sick bed in France in a bid to keep his job and was seen today participating during deliberations in the Lower House alongside other members of parliament.

Visibly in very bad shape, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril’s body is now a colony of diseases and there are fears he might just be Cameroon’s 6^th coronavirus case.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Health said in a statement that “We have just registered a 5th confirmed case in Yaoundé. He is a person returning from France. Like the others, he was immediately taken care of.” The development came hours after House Speaker Cavaye Djibril returned to Cameroon also from France.

The number of coronavirus cases in France where Cavaye Djibril spent the last two months doubled every three days and there were French citizens who were sick and who were in intensive care with the Francophone politician and that number runs into hundreds.

According to the latest official figures published on Sunday, France has had 127 coronavirus deaths and 5,423 confirmed cases.

That was a jump of 36 deaths and over 900 cases in 24 hours. More than 400 people have been hospitalised in a serious condition.

There is a real worry that the speed of the outbreak could saturate hospitals in France and this is something we absolutely want to avoid in Cameroon. This is also why Cavaye Djibril should have been told to remain at home.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

16, March 2020

Coronavirus leadership crisis: Is Trump presidency over? ⁰

The Trump administration’s response to the novel coronavirus has been characterized by misinformation, missteps and bureaucratic infighting. President Trump has tested negative for the coronavirus, but will he pass the leadership test as new cases of the highly-contagious respiratory disease pop up across the United States?

While Trump is not responsible for the coronavirus hitting the American shores and spreading throughout the country, he is certainly responsible for grave errors that critics say could even cost him his presidency.

“These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security,” Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at Ethics & Public Policy Center, wrote for The Atlantic.

President Trump has sent mixed messages on the outbreak in the US, going out of his way to deny evidence and brush aside the threat. He has also shrugged off blame for any mistakes his administration has made that have hampered efforts to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus that has killed dozens of people across the nation.

Since taking office, Trump has taken steps that experts have warned would prove disastrous during a public health crisis.He has shut down the National Security Council’s entire global health security unit, ignored an expert panel’s warning that the US is unprepared to deal with a pandemic and proposed budget cuts for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The most recent mistakes include the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, cutting personnel from pandemic preparedness,the decision to test too few people for the coronavirus and the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the CDC.

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said Friday when asked whether he took responsibility for the inadequate number of COVID-19 tests in the US. He instead blamed the testing failures on “rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time.”

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,acknowledged in congressional testimony early in the week that America is still not providing adequate testing for the coronavirus.

“The idea of anybody getting [testing] easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. I think it should be, but we’re not,”Fauci said.

Trump on Friday declared an emergency, unblocking tens of billions of dollars in federal aid. The administration has also negotiated a spending bill with Congress to provide assistance to the economy during the crisis.

Trump declares national emergency over coronavirus

However, the measure has proven too little too late. States across the country have largely been left on their own as they struggle to help their citizens.

For weeks, Trump and his team had had been too preoccupied by the potential political damage of an outbreak in an election year to acknowledge the true scale of the disaster. The president repeatedly contradicted health officials, claiming that the virus was contained in the US when it was actually spreading. He had also called the outbreak a Democratic “hoax” designed to hurt his reelection chances.

“They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who helped oversee the international response to Ebola during the Obama administration, told The Washington Post.

“To the extent that there’s someone to blame here, the blame is on poor, chaotic management from the White House and failure to acknowledge the big picture,” said Konyndyk, who is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

So far none of President Trump’s disastrous policy decisions have caught up on him like his failure on the coronavirus. He has largely escaped the fallout from his trade war with China because the US economy was strong. He walked away from a critical global climate accord relatively unharmed because global warming happens slowly.

“But now, in the face of a global health threat that is immediate and all around us—and requires, more than anything, a coordinated global response—Trump finds that his errors are flying back in his face like clown pies almost every time he opens his mouth,” wrote Michael Hirsh for the Foreign Policy magazine.

“All the defining attributes of his presidency—his ‘America First’ arrogance, his us-versus-them pettiness toward the rest of the world, his obvious desire for American self-isolation—are suddenly working against him. Trump had very little credibility before; it appears to be all but shot now,” Hirsh said.

Financial markets have suffered their worst losses since the 1987 stock market crash, wiping out nearly three years of economic gains. As the pandemic threatens to derail the US economy, reports say President Trump grows more worried about his reelection chances.

“The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over,” Wehner argued in his piece.

Culled from Presstv

15, March 2020

French Cameroun Politics: Ailing Cavaye Djibril unable to walk ⁰

Supported by two men, the speaker of the National Assembly, the Right Honourable Cavaye Yeguie Djibril has arrived Yaounde from his sick bed in France in a bid to keep his job.

It was about 8:30pm on Saturday, March 14, 2020 when the Air France flight carrying the Speaker of the National Assembly landed at the Yaounde Nsimalen International Airport.

Visibly in very bad shape, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril whose body is now a colony of disease was supported by two men to allow him take a seat on board a vehicle amid ovation from some CPDM comedians to his Yaounde residence.

Cavaye Djibril has been absent since the opening of the session on March 10^th 2020 but could make his appearance in the lower house on Monday the 16^th of March for a solemn ceremony that could see him reelected as speaker.

The Biya acolyte has been a member of Cameroon’s National Assembly for 47 years and was re-elected for a new five-year term in the recent twin poll. However, his future as president of the National Assembly is shrouded in uncertainty.

He reportedly left his hospital bed in France despite still being in a precarious state of health to be present in Yaounde for the election of the National Assembly bureau scheduled for next week.

It now remains to be seen whether the Head of State, Paul Biya, National President of the ruling CPDM party, will renew his confidence in him.

Culled from Cameroun Info.Net

15, March 2020

Coronavirus taking toll on diplomacy at UN ⁰

The spread of the new coronavirus around the world is also taking a toll on international diplomacy at the United Nations (UN) in New York, where mandatory social distancing has caused major disruptions to routine work.

Restrictions at the UN headquarters in downtown Manhattan include mandatory work from home for the majority of the 3,000 employees, and reduced physical participation for diplomats at the Security Council. Several sessions of the Council in the coming week have also been canceled.

The UN Secretariat oversees nearly 100,000 peace-keeping forces at conflict zones around the world, and employees and diplomats routinely discuss a wide variety of world issues at small and large meetings. Significantly reduced staff at the UN offices would therefore translate to sweeping disruptions to work.

“Everything gets a bit more complicated,” said one diplomat working from home, according to AFP, which did not reveal the diplomat’s name.

“We come, but there are fewer and fewer meetings, and consensus is going to be more difficult to achieve,” said one ambassador, whose name was also not mentioned.

On Thursday, a Philippine diplomat tested positive for the new virus, becoming the first case of infection in the UN community and prompting the closing of the Philippines’ mission.

A day later, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres canceled a trip to Africa and required all non-essential employees to telework until April 12.

“The United Nations is facing one of the biggest challenges in our history,” Guterres wrote in a letter to all UN employees obtained by AFP, adding that the virus was having “a major impact on us and our work.”

UN chief says declaration of coronavirus pandemic is call to action

Diplomatic delegations at the 15-member Security Council should include no more than three people. And a recent attempt to hold a meeting of the Council by teleconference also failed due to technological shortcomings.

Self-service in the cafeterias in the building has also been recently banned.

The near-empty hallways of the vast complex have the feel of a “ghost town,” according to one guard at a checkpoint in the building.

The new virus from the coronavirus family first emerged in China’s Wuhan City in December last year. Since then, it has spread across the world, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global pandemic.

Source: Presstv

15, March 2020

Doors slam shut across borderless Europe as coronavirus spreads ⁰

Europe’s cherished Schengen network of open internal borders is on the brink of collapse as more and more countries shut their doors in a frantic effort to stave off the coronavirus pandemic, even as experts warn such tactics will delay its spread – but not halt it.

At his daily briefing on the coronavirus emergency on Friday, Luca Zaia, the governor of Italy’s Veneto region, one of Europe’s worst-hit, told reporters that Europe’s borderless zone was “disappearing as we speak”.

“Schengen no longer exists, it will be remembered only in the history books,” Zaia said, pointing to the long lines of traffic stuck at Italy’s northeastern border, where Austrian officials have reintroduced stringent controls.

With Italy reporting the most virus cases and deaths anywhere in the world except China, the pandemic is increasingly wearing on the EU’s cherished core principle, which envisions a border-free Europe where citizens can freely live, work and travel.

Austria became the first country to impose drastic curbs on travel from Italy on Wednesday, urgently reinstalling border checkpoints in the exact spots where they had been dismantled back in 1997 when the country joined the Schengen Area.

All travellers seeking to cross the Brennero border from Italy are now required to present health certificates proving they have not contracted the COVID-19 virus – a measure that has slowed traffic on the busy Alpine crossing to a near standstill.

Since then, Slovenia and Switzerland, which also border Italy, have imposed similar curbs. But several other EU nations – including Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Cyprus – have announced restrictions that go far beyond travellers from Italy.

“Most of the cases that have been propagating the coronavirus epidemic in Poland are imported cases,” Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters as he announced the closure of his country’s borders with all its neighbours starting at midnight on Saturday.

“We don’t want the coronavirus to head our way in droves.”

‘Uncharted territory’

The successive border closures came as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Friday that Europe had become the pandemic’s current “epicenter” after reporting more cases and deaths than the rest of world combined, excluding China.

More than 22,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed across Europe, and nearly 1,500 people with the virus have died on the continent – most of them in Italy.

While the virus is spreading across the continent, the rushed actions taken by individual states are highlighting the lack of a coordinated approach to fighting the coronavirus – not least among the European Union’s 27 member states.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, has recommended coordinated health screenings at the borders as a way to address infections, rather than border closures.

“We’ve seen travel bans and controls being put in place in a number of member states,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters on Friday. “Certain controls may be justified, but general travel bans are not seen as being the most effective by the World Health Organization. Moreover, they have a strong social and economic impact. They disrupt people’s lives and business across the borders.”

To avoid a patchwork of national policies that are ineffective and cause economic harm, “any measure that is taken must be proportionate” and coordinated with Brussels, she said, suggesting that preliminary checks for signs of infection could be done at the Schengen Area’s borders, both internal and external.

“Member states, especially neighbouring ones, need to work very closely together,” Von der Leyen said. “In this way, and it’s the only way, we can make sure that our citizens receive the healthcare that they need immediately, wherever they are.”

But Von der Leyen’s commission, along with other EU institutions, has a very limited role to play in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. It polices the Schengen Area’s rules, but individual countries are responsible for their own health and public safety policies.

In a sign of the EU’s limited power, the Danish government also announced late Friday that it was closing all of its borders – land, sea and air – to travellers. Denmark consulted with neighbouring countries prior to the announcement but not with EU officials.

“We are in uncharted territory,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a news conference as he announced the travel ban. “I know that the overall list of measures is very extreme and will be seen as very extreme, but I am convinced that it’s worth it.”

‘Foreign disease’

In many ways, the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated divisions that first came to the fore in 2015, when eastern and central European states closed their borders to migrants and thwarted EU efforts to implement migrant quotas across the bloc.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country has also banned travel from Italy, has made an explicit link between the two crises.

“We are fighting a two-front war: one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus – there is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement,” Orban told Hungarian media on Friday.

“Our experience is that foreigners brought in the disease, and that it is spreading among foreigners,” he added, in remarks that mirrored US President Donald Trump’s description of the coronavirus as a “foreign disease”.

Trump’s decision on Wednesday to slap a 30-day travel ban on people coming from the Schengen Area has stunned and angered EU officials, who were not consulted prior to the move.

“Instead of tending to the problems of his country, and to a virus that knows no borders, he thinks that he can fight it like people that have a different citizenship than American,” said German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.

Though it has stepped up monitoring travellers for signs of infection, Germany has so far refused to close its borders. Spain and Italy have also opted to keep borders open, even as they place their own populations under lockdown.

“This virus cares not for borders, be they internal or external,” said Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday as he said his country planned to declare a nationwide state of emergency.

‘Turn off the source’

French President Emmanuel Macron has also been critical of EU members that have unilaterally closed their borders, calling such moves counter-productive and pleading instead for coordination across the bloc. He has stressed the importance of scientific evidence, rather than ideology or political expediency, in guiding the world’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

But just as governments are divided over how to tackle the novel virus, so is the scientific community.

In justifying Trump’s travel ban, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top official on infectious diseases at the US National Institute of Health, noted that 70 percent of new infections could be traced to Europe.

“It was pretty compelling that we needed to turn off the source from that region,” he told a congressional panel on Thursday.

Internal blockades have proved their effectiveness in China, where the virus first originated, said Sterghios Moschos, a virologist at Northumbria University in the UK. Appearing on the FRANCE 24 Debate show, Moschos noted that the blockade of Hubei province “stopped in its tracks the transmission intensity”, thereby sparing other parts of the country.

Other medical experts are doubtful that the Chinese model would prove useful now that the disease has spread across the globe and is being passed through so-called community transmission – among people who haven’t travelled overseas.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led a World Health Organization team in China as the COVID-19 disease was surging last month, said countries might gain in the short term by limiting travel, but that overall “it doesn’t help to restrict movement”.

Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson and medical doctor currently involved in the virus response, echoed the concerns about the false comfort of closing borders as a delaying tactic.

“You divert a lot of resources when you are focused on closing borders, rather than focusing on protecting your health workers, preparing your health systems and enhancing your disease surveillance,” she told The Intercept.

Even Britain, which was initially exempt from Trump’s travel ban, has expressed scepticism about its effectiveness.

“With regard to flight bans, we are always guided by the science as we make our decisions here,” Finance Minister Rishi Sunak told BBC radio on Friday.

He added: “The advice we are getting is that there isn’t evidence that interventions like closing borders or travel bans are going to have a material effect on the spread of the infection.”

Source: France 24

14, March 2020

Yaounde: Military says Ambazonia fighters killed 4 including gov’t official ⁰

Cameroon’s military says anglophone separatists killed four hostages, including a local official, after troops attacked their camp in a western part of the country. The military said it freed five others the anglophone rebels had abducted and raped.

A young woman recovering at a Cameroon military base in the French-speaking, western town of Bafoussam, confirmed to a reporter that rebel fighters this week abducted and raped her.

Cameroon’s military rescued the 17-year-old, whose name is being withheld to prevent stigma, and four other young women on Tuesday and brought them to the base.

She said heavily armed anglophone rebels took her on Sunday from a Catholic church in the English-speaking, northwestern town of Mbiame.

The separatist fighters took her into the bush, she said, and kept her and several other hostages at a remote camp.

“They accused me of communicating with military men and directing them [the troops] how to move about and kill them [separatists],” the woman said. “So, when we reached their camp, we were beaten. When I went there, these my friends were already there. We were badly beaten. We sleep on the floor. They do not give us any food or water.”

Ransom demanded by rebels

The 17-year-old said the rebels demanded the women’s families pay a ransom of $3,000 each for their release or else they would be killed.

But Cameroonian troops raided the camp, freeing the five hungry, tired and frayed women, aged 17 to 21.

Paul Atanga Nji, Cameroon’s territorial administration minister, said the rebels took the women in revenge after troops last week attacked their hideouts and killed several fighters.

“These are children who have been kidnapped by the terrorists, abused sexually, raped by the terrorists and, thanks to the professionalism of our defense forces, these children were released,” Nji said. “The children are under medical control. The defense forces are assisting them.”

Seven rebels reportedly killed

Nji said the women were rescued during fighting that killed seven rebels. He gave no casualty figures for the military and it was not possible to confirm the numbers.

Not all those being held hostage came out alive, though.

Officials in the English-speaking, northwest region of Ngoketunjia said rebels killed four hostages.

Senior government official Quetong Handerson Konge issued a statement that said among the four victims was a deputy mayor. The statement called on the population to continue helping the military find rebels and their hideouts.

Rebels in Cameroon have not responded directly to the accusations but have been sharing videos on social media of the killed civilians and warning people against aiding the military.

The separatist conflict broke out in 2017 over resentment that Cameroon’s English-speaking minority is treated as second class to the French-speaking majority.

Fighting in the western English-speaking regions has left about 3,000 people dead and displaced more than 500,000 to French-speaking regions and neighboring Nigeria.

Source: VOA

14, March 2020

Hungary’s Prime Minister blames foreigners, migration for coronavirus spread ⁰

Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday blamed foreigners and migration for the spread of coronavirus in Hungary, as the authorities announced that two infected Iranians were to be expelled.

Orban, asked during a radio interview why Hungary had closed its universities but not schools in response to the virus outbreak, said it was because “there are lots of foreigners there”.

“Our experience is that primarily foreigners brought in the disease, and that it is spreading among foreigners,” he said.

So far, Hungary has confirmed 19 cases of infections, nine of them Iranians (mostly university scholarship-holders), one British national, and the rest Hungarians.

“It’s no coincidence that the virus first showed up among Iranians,” said Orban.

“We cannot separate the tens of thousands of foreign students from the Hungarian students, that’s why we thought it best to stop all visits to those institutions,” he said.

Interior ministry announces two expulsions

The interior ministry announced Friday that two Iranian students diagnosed with the virus would be expelled because they had left a hospital quarantine hall without permission and with no protective clothing.

They had been aggressive towards the medical staff who placed them in isolation, the statement added. The pair would be expelled as soon as their health permitted and banned from staying in Hungary for three years.

In Hungarian-language messages posted on its Facebook page the government has warned Iranians of detention and deportation if they don’t cooperate with disease control authorities.

Last week after the first infections were confirmed — both Iranian students — Budapest suspended the issuing of visas to Iranian citizens.

Earlier in March Hungary barred the doors indefinitely to its border camps for asylum-seekers as it said refugees and migrants arriving there may have been in virus hotspot Iran.

Government officials and pro-Orban media have also drawn a link between the virus outbreak and migration.

“We are fighting a two-front war, one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus, there is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement,” Orban said Friday.

(AFP)

14, March 2020

Rocket attack hits US-occupied Taji base in Iraq for 2nd time in a week ⁰

A barrage of rockets hit a base housing U.S. and other coalition troops north of Baghdad, Iraqi security officials said Saturday, just days after a similar attack killed three servicemen, including two Americans.

At least two Iraqi soldiers were wounded in the attack at Camp Taji, according to the Iraqi officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The officials said over a dozen rockets landed inside the base. Some struck the area where coalition forces are based, while others fell on a runway used by Iraqi forces.

The was no immediate comment from the coalition regarding Saturday’s attack.

The attack was unusual because it occurred during the day. Previous assaults on military bases housing U.S. troops typically occurred at night.

The previous rocket attack against Camp Taji on Wednesday also killed a British serviceman. It prompted American airstrikes Friday against what U.S. officials said were mainly weapons facilities belonging to Kataib Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia group believed to be responsible.

However, Iraq’s military said those airstrikes killed five security force members and a civilian, while wounding five fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella organization including an array of militias, including some Iran-backed groups.

Iran-backed Shiite militia groups vowed to exact revenge for Friday’s U.S. strikes, signalling another cycle of tit-for-tat violence between Washington and Tehran that could play out inside Iraq.

America’s killing of Iraqi security forces might also give Iran-backed militia groups more reason to stage counterattacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, analysts said.

“We can’t forget that the PMF is a recognized entity within the Iraqi security forces; they aren’t isolated from the security forces and often are co-located on the same bases or use the same facilities,” said Sajad Jiyad, a researcher and former managing director of the Bayan Center, a Baghdad-based think tank.

“Now the (Iran-backed) groups who supported the initial strike in Taji, who were the most outspoken, feel obliged, authorized, maybe even legitimized to respond, ostensibly to protect Iraqi sovereignty but really to keep the pressure up on Americans,” he added.

“There are no red lines anymore,” Jiyad said.

Wednesday’s attack on Camp Taji was the deadliest to target U.S. troops in Iraq since a late December rocket attack on an Iraqi base, which killed a U.S. contractor. That attack set in motion a series of attacks that brought Iraq to the brink of war.

After the contractor was killed, America launched airstrikes targeting Kataib Hezbollah, which in turn led to protests at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

A U.S. drone strike in Baghdad then killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a top commander responsible for expeditionary operations across the wider Mideast. Iran struck back with a ballistic missile attack on U.S. forces in Iraq, the Islamic Republic’s most direct assault on America since the 1979 seizing of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

The U.S. and Iran stepped back from further attacks after the Soleimani incident. A senior U.S. official said in late January, when U.S.-Iran tensions had cooled, that the killing of Americans constituted a red line that could spark more violence.

(AP)

14, March 2020

Western couple seized in Burkina Faso two years ago found in Mali ⁰

A Canadian woman and her Italian partner kidnapped in Burkina Faso in 2018 have been found in good health in the northwest of Mali after fleeing their captors and were set to be repatriated, diplomatic and UN sources said on Saturday.

Tedith Blais and Luca Tacchetto, both in their thirties, managed to escape near the northern city of Kidal on Friday and were taken to the local base of the UN mission in Mali, known by its French acronym MINUSMA.

The pair were then flown out on Saturday afternoon on a special plane to Mali’s capital Bamako.

They appeared in good spirits but seemed taken aback when greeted by the Malian, UN and Canadian officials with extended elbows. The pair were then informed about the coronavirus crisis and the new social etiquette.

A health official sporting a mask and protective gear then took their temperature. The couple, who were wearing white T-shirts, did not speak to reporters.

They were then due to be taken to the presidential palace before being repatriated.

Malian Foreign Minister Tiebile Drame told AFP at the airport that no ransom had been paid.

– No ransom paid –

“I can assure you that nothing was paid,” he said.

MINUSMA mission head Mahamat Saleh Annadif explained some of the details surrounding their reappearance.

“We have good news. Yesterday around three in the afternoon our Kidal staff informed me they had found two hostages — a Canadian and an Italian,” said Annadif.

“We have conducted medical tests. They are keeping really well and we let them rest,” he said.

The pair were dressed like Tuaregs and apparently stopped a passing car and told the driver to take them to the nearest UN post. There was no detailed information on their escape or the identity of the kidnappers.

“From preliminary information they must have managed to escape. They were picked up by a civilian vehicle which drove them to the MINUSMA camp.”

Blais, from Sherbrooke — about 160 kilometres (100 miles) from Montreal — and her partner Tacchetto, from Venice, disappeared in mid-December 2018 while travelling through the west African country.

The couple were driving by car to Ouagadougou from Bobo-Dioulasso, more than 360 kilometres west of the capital, when all trace of them was lost, according to Blais’s family.

They had been planning to go to Togo to work on a humanitarian project.

In April 2019, a Burkina government spokesman said the two had been abducted and probably taken out of the country, but that they were not in any danger.

Burkina Faso, which had been a safe destination for years, has been wracked by jihadist violence since 2015 and several foreigners have been kidnapped.

An Australian and a Romanian national still remain missing.

– Mali ‘stabilising’

It was not immediately clear how the couple were found in the vicinity of Kidal, about 1,500 kilometres northeast of Bamako which was under the control of Tuareg rebels who waged war against the Malian government from 2012 until 2015, when they signed a peace accord.

The violence has since spread from northern Mali to the centre of the country and spilled over to neighbouring states such as Burkina Faso and Niger.

But foreign minister Drame said their escape was the latest bit of “good news” in Mali.

Mali’s neighbouring governments are often wary of former rebel groups, for example, suspecting them of cooperating with jihadists. They view Kidal as a rear base for Islamist militants.

Source: AFP