A policeman stands over the bodies of people killed by Guinean junta forces in Conakry.
A policeman stands over the bodies of people killed by Guinean junta forces in Conakry.

War crimes without the war?



NAIROBI // They started out as peaceful political protests. They turned into bloody riots that drew international scorn. Now, the world's only permanent war crimes court says it is looking into whether atrocities were committed in Kenya and Guinea, making them the first countries not at war to draw the attention of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Some court observers, however, wonder if the ICC's words will lead to action.

In Guinea, it was over quickly. Thousands of demonstrators had gathered last month at a football stadium in the steamy seaside capital of Conakry. They were protesting against a decision by the country's military junta leader to run for president in January. Moussa Camara, a little-known army captain, has led the junta since last year's death of Lansana Conté, Guinea's long-time dictator. His decision to run for president was an about-face of what he said when he came to power.

"We are patriots, not hungry for power," he said on television last Christmas. "We don't intend to stay in power forever." The protesters demanded a return to democracy. Many carried signs that said, "Army out of power". Soldiers, notorious for being poorly trained, moved in to quell the riot using tear gas and batons. Then came the bullets and bayonets. Human rights groups said 157 people died during the premeditated attack. They said women were raped in the streets by soldiers.

Two weeks ago, The Hague-based ICC announced that it is "examining the situation" in Guinea to see whether to bring war crimes charges against the military rulers. "From the information we have received, from the pictures I have seen, women were abused or otherwise brutalized on the pitch of Conakry's stadium, apparently by men in uniform," Fatou Bensouda, the deputy ICC prosecutor, said in a statement. "This is appalling, unacceptable. It must never happen again. Those responsible must be held accountable."

In Kenya's case, the violence lasted much longer. After a disputed presidential election in December 2007, rival ethnic groups bludgeoned each other with sticks and hacked each other with machetes for two months. A peace deal ended the conflict after more than 1,200 people had died. Independent investigators found that a handful of top politicians and businessmen were involved in organising the mobs. Last month, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, said his office would prosecute the suspects that are most responsible for the violence while a special court in Kenya would deal with lesser suspects.

"Kenya will be a world example on managing violence," said Mr Moreno-Ocampo, who is due in Kenya for talks next week. Though they are a continent apart, Kenya and Guinea share some similarities. They are both stable countries in troubled regions. Guinea, in West Africa, is bordered by Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau, all of which have been at war in the past decade. Kenya, in the east, is surrounded by Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are perpetually embroiled in conflict.

The ICC's decision to look into the cases in Kenya and Guinea demonstrates a shift in focus from war-torn regions to traditionally peaceful ones and could serve as a warning to leaders of such countries as Zimbabwe and Myanmar, who have long enjoyed impunity from international justice. Since it began work in 2002, the court has investigated and prosecuted crimes against humanity in four wars: Congo, northern Uganda, Central African Republic and Sudan's Darfur region. The ICC is also examining the situation in Afghanistan, Colombia, Ivory Coast, Georgia and the Palestinian territories, areas that are in or have recently been at war.

Examining a situation is different from investigating and prosecuting a case, analysts say. An ICC announcement that it is looking into Kenya's and Guinea's situation does not meanthat it will take action. "I don't know what 'looking into' means," said Lisa Clifford, who follows the ICC for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, an international media development organisation. "I wonder how serious they are."

@Email:mbrown@thenational.ae

Match info:

Leicester City 1
Ghezzal (63')

Liverpool 2
Mane (10'), Firmino (45')

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Paltan

Producer: JP Films, Zee Studios
Director: JP Dutta
Cast: Jackie Shroff, Sonu Sood, Arjun Rampal, Siddhanth Kapoor, Luv Sinha and Harshvardhan Rane
Rating: 2/5

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Jigra
Director: Vasan Bala
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
Rated: 3.5/5
Libya's Gold

UN Panel of Experts found regime secretly sold a fifth of the country's gold reserves. 

The panel’s 2017 report followed a trail to West Africa where large sums of cash and gold were hidden by Abdullah Al Senussi, Qaddafi’s former intelligence chief, in 2011.

Cases filled with cash that was said to amount to $560m in 100 dollar notes, that was kept by a group of Libyans in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

A second stash was said to have been held in Accra, Ghana, inside boxes at the local offices of an international human rights organisation based in France.

Citadel: Honey Bunny first episode

Directors: Raj & DK

Stars: Varun Dhawan, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Kashvi Majmundar, Kay Kay Menon

Rating: 4/5

Where to buy art books in the UAE

There are a number of speciality art bookshops in the UAE.

In Dubai, The Lighthouse at Dubai Design District has a wonderfully curated selection of art and design books. Alserkal Avenue runs a pop-up shop at their A4 space, and host the art-book fair Fully Booked during Art Week in March. The Third Line, also in Alserkal Avenue, has a strong book-publishing arm and sells copies at its gallery. Kinokuniya, at Dubai Mall, has some good offerings within its broad selection, and you never know what you will find at the House of Prose in Jumeirah. Finally, all of Gulf Photo Plus’s photo books are available for sale at their show. 

In Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi has a beautiful selection of catalogues and art books, and Magrudy’s – across the Emirates, but particularly at their NYU Abu Dhabi site – has a great selection in art, fiction and cultural theory.

In Sharjah, the Sharjah Art Museum sells catalogues and art books at its museum shop, and the Sharjah Art Foundation has a bookshop that offers reads on art, theory and cultural history.

COMPANY PROFILE

Company: Bidzi

● Started: 2024

● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid

● Based: Dubai, UAE

● Industry: M&A

● Funding size: Bootstrapped

● No of employees: Nine

The biog

Favourite pet: cats. She has two: Eva and Bito

Favourite city: Cape Town, South Africa

Hobby: Running. "I like to think I’m artsy but I’m not".

Favourite move: Romantic comedies, specifically Return to me. "I cry every time".

Favourite spot in Abu Dhabi: Saadiyat beach

Singham Again

Director: Rohit Shetty

Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone

Rating: 3/5

Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts

Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.

The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.

Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.

More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.

The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.

Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:

November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 2017Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.

December 2016A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.

July 2016Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.

May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.

New Year's Eve 2011A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.

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'Saand Ki Aankh'

Produced by: Reliance Entertainment with Chalk and Cheese Films
Director: Tushar Hiranandani
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Bhumi Pednekar, Prakash Jha, Vineet Singh
Rating: 3.5/5 stars

German plea
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the German parliament that. Russia had erected a new wall across Europe. 

"It's not a Berlin Wall -- it is a Wall in central Europe between freedom and bondage and this Wall is growing bigger with every bomb" dropped on Ukraine, Zelenskyy told MPs.

Mr Zelenskyy was applauded by MPs in the Bundestag as he addressed Chancellor Olaf Scholz directly.

"Dear Mr Scholz, tear down this Wall," he said, evoking US President Ronald Reagan's 1987 appeal to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

FORSPOKEN
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Electoral College Victory

Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate. 

 

Popular Vote Tally

The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.

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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
 
Started: 2020
 
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
 
Based: Dubai, UAE
 
Sector: Entertainment 
 
Number of staff: 210 
 
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners