[South African President Jacob Zuma told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that it “completely ignored” the African Union when it allowed NATO’s bombing campaign to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. ]
BURUNDI :
Actualité Afrique : Intempéries au Burundi : plus de 300 maisons détruites en province Cibitoke par une pluie torrentielle
Casafree.com /le 12/1/2012
Plus de 300 maisons ont été détruites mercredi après-midi par une pluie torrentielle en commune Buganda dans la province Cibitoke (Ouest du Burundi), a rapporté jeudi matin la radio Isanganiro.
Plus de 160 maisons en tôles et 240 en paille, précise-t-on, ont été démolies par une pluie torrentielle qui s’est abattue sur le secteur Ndava. Les champs de culture ont été sérieusement aussi endommagés.
La population victime de ces intempéries demande de l’aide d’ urgence. Au cours de la semaine écoulée, une pluie diluvienne avait détruit 150 maisons dans la commune urbaine de Kanyosha en Mairie de Bujumbura
Burundi : le leader d’un parti aurait été arrêté en Tanzanie
Jeudi 12 janvier 2012 /Xinhua
BUJUMBURA (Xinhua) – Alexis Sinduhije, président de la formation politique burundaise dénommée “Mouvement pour la solidarité et la démocratie” (MSD), serait en état d’arrestation depuis mercredi soir à Dar-es-salaam en Tanzanie, a rapporté jeudi la Radio Publique Africaine (RPA).
Le motif exact de l’arrestation de M. Sinduhije reste inconnu, selon la même source. Aucune source judiciaire burundaise n’a confirmé ou infirmé cette information.
Le président du MSD, dont la formation politique appartient à l’Alliance des démocrates pour le changement (ADC), une coalition des partis politiques d’opposition formée le 31 mai 2010 au lendemain du scrutin communal “controversé” organisé une semaine plus tôt, était parti en cavale quelques semaines après ces élections en invoquant être inquiet pour sa sécurité personnelle.
Affaire de créance du Burundi auprès de l’Ouganda
Pana/ 12/01/2012
Bujumbura blanchie dans l’affaire d’une créance du Burundi auprès de l’Ouganda – Le parquet général de la république du Burundi vient de blanchir le gouvernement du présumé détournement du remboursement d’une dette contractée par l’Ouganda envers le Burundi, apprend-on du verdict du parquet à Bujumbura. La dette remonte dans les année 1980, lorsque le mouvement ougandais de rébellion, la National resistance army, (NRA), dirigée par l’actuel président de la République d’Ouganda, Yoweri Museveni, bénéficiait du soutien de l’ancien homme fort du Burundi, le colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza.
Le régime du colonel Bagaza avait livré à l’époque, aux maquisard de la NRA des effets militaires, ainsi que des vivres estimés à quelque 13 millions de dollars US dont le remboursement devait intervenir une fois que la NRA aurait pris le pouvoir à Kampala.
Une plainte a été introduite l’année dernière auprès du parquet général de la république, par un député en rupture de banc avec le parti au pouvoir, Manacé Nzobonimpa, accusant plusieurs dignitaires du régime actuelle d’avoir détourné à leur profit le remboursement effectué par l’Ouganda pour honorer cette vieille dette.
Le verdict du parquet général de la république du Burundi, tombé ce mardi, laisse entendre que les enquêtes, qui ont été menées autour du sujet, n’ont débouché sur aucun élément infractionnel dans la gestion de la dette.
Selon la même source, le dossier a été classé ‘sans suite’, car une grande partie de la dette avait été remboursée sous forme de matériels scolaires dont l’actuel régime avait besoin pour asseoir sa nouvelle politique de scolarisation universelle.
Le remboursement du reste de la dette se poursuit, selon le parquet général, qui s’est ensuite retourné contre le député plaignant, actuellement représentant du Burundi au parlement de la communauté Est-africaine (CEA), à Arusha (Tanzanie), pour « dénonciation calomnieuse ».
RWANDA :
Rwanda says probe exonerates Kagame
By William Wallis in London /www.ft.com/13012012
Rwanda has seized on a French probe into the cause of the plane crash that killed a former president and triggered the country’s 1994 genocide as proving that President Paul Kagame was not involved.
The mystery as to who ordered the plane to be shot down has for years been a source of conspiracy theories and diplomatic conflict between France and Rwanda.
The judicial probe, launched by French counter-terrorism judge Mark Trevidic, included investigations by ballistics and other forensic experts at the scene of the 1994 crash, in which Juvenal Habyarimana and the French pilot and crew were killed. A 400-page report was handed to lawyers involved in the case but has not been made public.
According to Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda’s foreign minister, Mr Trevidic concluded that the missiles that downed the plane were fired from in or near a military base controlled by extremists of Mr Habyarimana’s own Hutu ethnic group.
This contradicts the findings of an earlier, controversial report by magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguieres. Mr Bruguieres did not visit Rwanda but said on the basis of testimony that Mr Kagame had ordered the attack and that the missiles had been fired from a camp controlled by his Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels.
“This [latest report] was done in a very meticulous manner. What matters is the scientific evidence that nobody can change. The reality was measured by experts in ballistics, in sound and everything that cannot be subject to speculation,” Ms Mushikiwabo told the FT by phone from Kigali.
Mr Bruguieres charged six top allies of Mr Kagame in 2006, including Rose Kabuye, then chief of protocol at the Rwandan presidency, causing a rupture in Franco-Rwandan relations. Ms Kabuye was arrested in Germany in 2007 and deported to France before later being released.
The Rwandan government portrayed the Bruguieres report as a tissue of lies and accused France of arming and training the extremist forces that carried out the genocide.
Ms Mushikiwabo said the fresh findings would help consolidate improved relations between the two countries.
But the Trevidic report is unlikely to silence speculation about who shot down the plane. In the years since the genocide two main theories have prevailed. One, given most credence internationally, blames Hutu extremists opposed to the peace agreement Mr Habyarimana had signed with the Rwandan Patriotic Front and already finalising plans for the mass extermination of minority Tutsis.
Witnesses have however alleged that Mr Kagame was responsible, claiming he ordered the attack in the knowledge it would trigger massacres and provide the grounds for an invasion by his rebel army.
Jean-Yves Dupeux, a lawyer for Habyarimana’s children, said the latest report did not support the Rwandan government’s account. “What the experts are saying is that the shots could not have been fired from Paul Kagame’s camp. That doesn’t mean it is the other side,” he said.
Jacques Myard, a French MP, also countered the fresh findings, repeating claims that the Soviet missiles used in the attack were from a batch sold to Uganda, the RPF’s rear base.
Mugesera deportation delayed
By SUE MONTGOMERY, The Gazette With Files From Marianne White In Quebec City www.montrealgazette.com/January 13, 2012
Quebec Superior Court judge grants stay, during UN review of Rwandan’s case
Léon Mugesera’s attempts to avoid deportation to Rwanda took another series of dramatic turns Thursday, with his case bouncing back to Quebec Superior Court where a judge gave him a reprieve from expulsion to at least Jan. 20 while the United Nations reviews his case.
Ottawa, which thought it had finally – after 15 years – succeeded in turfing Mugesera, said it was disappointed with the Superior Court ruling and that it was examining its legal options.
“This individual was ordered to leave Canada 15 years ago and has benefited from Canada’s generous appeals system ever since,” Mike Patton, spokesperson for Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, wrote in an email.
“Our government is committed to ensuring that all inadmissible individuals and bogus refugees are kept out of Canada.”
Mugesera, who is supposed stand trial in his native Rwanda for inciting the 1994 genocide, remained hospitalized in Quebec City, in critical condition, his family said in a statement. Payam Akhavan, a McGill University law professor and former United Nations war crimes prosecutor, said the plea before Superior Court is a dying gasp of desperation from a man “shamelessly exploiting our humaneness as a society.”
The safeguard order, issued by Justice William Fraiberg, was granted after lawyers filed a motion on behalf of Mugesera against Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, the Canada Border Services Agency and the Attorney-General of Canada. The motion sought to give legal teeth to a request to Ottawa issued Wednesday by the United Nations Committee Against Torture that Mugesera not be deported until his case is reviewed by the committee’s 10 experts.
The safeguard order gives Mugesera until Tuesday to present a motion to the government for an interlocutory or permanent injunction that will be heard in court, if necessary, on Jan. 20.
Mugesera, 59, arrived in Canada in 1993 with his wife and five children and was granted permanent residence status. They’d fled Rwanda in 1992 after an arrest warrant was issued for Mugesera, who had made a speech allegedly inciting the majority Hutus to kill the minority Tutsis. That speech was later broadcast during the 1994 genocide, which claimed the lives of more than 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
He was ordered deported in 1996, after it was discovered he’d lied on his application form, which asked whether he’d been involved in the commission of a crime against humanity.
His deportation went through several appeals until 2005, when the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that Mugesera was not admissible to Canada because there are reasonable grounds to believe he committed a crime against humanity.
On Wednesday, the Federal Court gave what appeared to be the final word on the case – to leave the country on Thursday. Mugesera, apparently overcome with stress, was rushed to hospital, the UN stepped in, followed by Quebec Superior Court. Rwanda’s prosecutor-general, Martin Ngoga, called the UN’s intervention in the case “naive” in light of the Supreme Court decision, the fact the United Nations High Commission for Refugees is advising Rwandans to return home, and the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania sending suspects back to stand trial at home.
“So the committee should have at least known that even within the UN community itself there has been enough decisions, enough evidence to show that Rwanda is not a country that can torture suspects,” he said. “We will not even co-operate with them because we think it’s not warranted, it is in bad taste and we’re happy the Canadian government has decided it will ignore it.”
The motion filed before Superior Court Thursday says that even Théogène Rudasingwa, who was the secretarygeneral of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front and a major during the genocide, has recently underlined the serious risk of torture and abuse and called on governments to stop sending people back.
Rudasingwa, who lives in the U.S. and has fallen out with his former ally, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, was sentenced in absentia last March to a 24-year jail term for threatening state security and propagating ethnic divisions. Akhavan said that Mugesera’s case is so high profile and under such scrutiny, it’s doubtful the man would be tortured if sent to Rwanda.
“If we are saying that any risk of torture, no matter how remote, is grounds for resisting deportation, we make it all but impossible to deport people to most countries in Africa and the resulting effect is either we have to prosecute those people before our own courts or we encourage a culture of impunity,” he said.
“Obviously, the (Canadian) courts don’t want to be complicit in a situation where someone’s human rights are going to be abused, but this is not the case to do that, I believe.”
smontgomery@ montrealgazette.com
11.01.12 – ICTR/BAGARAGAZA – FREED RWANDAN CONVICT STILL SEEKING LEGAL STATUS IN SWEDEN
www.hirondellenews.com/13012012
Arusha, January 11, 2012 (FH) – Former Rwandan Tea Authority boss Michel Bagaragaza is still seeking legal status in Sweden after his early release from jail there on December 1. Bagaragaza has requested the right to stay in Sweden, but his request is still pending examination by the Swedish authorities, according to ICTR spokesman Roland Amoussouga.
Sweden is one of the countries which agreed to take ICTR convicts in its jails. Bagaragaza is the first person to be released early by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), after serving two-thirds of an eight year sentence for complicity to commit genocide.
Presenting a report to the UN Security Council on December 7, Tribunal President Khalida Rachid Khan appealed to UN member states to take in ICTR acquitted persons and convicts who have served their sentence.
There are five acquitted persons still being lodged in a “safe house” in Arusha at the ICTR’s expense because they have not yet found a host country. They are Protais Zigiranyirazo, brother in-law of the former Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana; former ministers André Ntagerura (Transport), Casimir Bizimungu (Health) and Jérôme Bicamumpaka (Foreign Affairs); and the former Rwandan military officer General Gratien Kabiligi. Also in the safe house are Lieutenant Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva, whose 15-year sentence was more than time served in ICTR detention; and General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, whose sentence was equal to time served but who is still still awaiting the outcome of the Prosecutor’s appeal.
“Sweden is unlikely to expel Bagaragaza any more than Tanzania is likely to expel the others, since it had agreed to take him into one of its prisons,” a source at the ICTR Registry told Hirondelle. “But finding host countries for the Arusha Seven or getting a more secure status for Bagaragaza in Sweden remains very difficult.
“Western coutnries are making it harder and harder for immigrants, even so-called normal ones. I say that because unfortunately some people still view acquitted persons as guilty of genocide. And let’s not forget that some countries may not want to upset the Rwandan authorities.”
Bagaragaza surrendered himself to the ICTR on August 15, 2005, and pleaded guilty to complicity to commit genocide. He confessed to stocking arms used during the genocide at the Rubaya tea factory in Gisenyi prefecture (northern Rwanda). He also said he gave money, arms and the use of tea factory vehicles to Interahamwe militia who were massacring Tutsis, out of fears for the safety of himself and his family.
On November 17, 2009, the ICTR found Bagaragaza guilty and sentenced him to eight years in jail with credit for the time already served in the ICTR Detention Facility since 2005. He was sent to Sweden in July 2010 to complete his sentence.
The ICTR agreed to his early release for a number of reasons, including the fact that he confessed to his crimes and expressed remorse, and his good behaviour in the Swedish prison.
ER/GF/JC
RDC CONGO:
RDC: l’annonce des résultats des législatives repoussée de quelques jours
(AFP) /12012012
KINSHASA — La Commission électorale de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC) a repoussé de quelques jours l’annonce, initialement prévue ce vendredi, des résultats provisoires complets des élections législatives du 28 novembre, a-t-on appris jeudi auprès de la Céni.
La Commission électorale nationale indépendante va continuer à publier “au fur et à mesure” des résultats partiels du scrutin à un tour, a déclaré à l’AFP Matthieu Mpita, rapporteur de la Céni, qui n’a pas donné de date précise pour l’annonce des chiffres complets, évoquant simplement un délai d’environ “une semaine”.
La Céni avait suspendu quelques jours la publication des résultats partiels, débutée fin décembre, après des critiques sur le manque de transparence et de crédibilité du processus de compilation des résultats dans de nombreuses circonscriptions.
Depuis le 5 janvier, une poignée d’experts électoraux internationaux de deux ONG américaines sont en RDC pour tenter d’apporter une aide technique à la Céni.
La Céni a déjà donné les résultats provisoires de 107 des 169 circonscriptions. Il manque encore notamment ceux des quatre circonscriptions de la capitale Kinshasa, où près de 5.500 candidats se sont présentés pour 51 sièges.
Au total, près de 19.000 candidats ont brigué les 500 sièges de l’Assemblée.
Les législatives se sont déroulées en même temps que l’élection présidentielle à un tour, remportée par le chef de l’Etat sortant Joseph Kabila. Il a devancé l’opposant Etienne Tshisekedi qui s’est autoproclamé “président élu” après avoir dénoncé de nombreuses irrégularités, constatées également par plusieurs pays et observateurs nationaux et internationaux.
L’Union européenne avait pris acte le 20 décembre de l’investiture du président Kabila mais avait menacé de “réévaluer” son “soutien” à la RDC si des progrès n’étaient pas réalisés dans le dépouillement des votes des législatives.
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Lire suite du document : bur13012012.doc
