PRETORIA: South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma challenged on Friday a court ruling which ordered him to launch a legal probe into corruption allegations against him, according to legal documents.
The North Gauteng High Court last week ordered Zuma to appoint a judicial inquiry within 30 days to investigate graft allegations that have dogged him and his associates in recent years.
It said the country’s chief justice, not Zuma, should choose a judge to preside over the inquiry to avoid a conflict of interest.
But in court papers seen by local media on Friday, Zuma’s lawyers challenged the order on 20 grounds, arguing that it “offends the separation of powers doctrine” which governs the relationship between the executive and the judiciary.
In its ruling last week, the court also reprimanded the president for being “seriously reckless” by defying the recommendations of the country’s graft watchdog which proposed the judicial inquiry.
Judge Dunstan Mlambo said the watchdog had “uncovered worrying levels of malfeasance and corruption” and yet Zuma was “delaying the resolution” of the allegations.
He also ruled that Zuma should personally pay the litigation costs, including one in which he had sought to halt the publication last year of the graft watchdog’s scathing report linking him to the wealthy Gupta family.
The Indian-origin business family is accused of having undue power over Zuma’s government, including influence over the appointment of some Cabinet ministers.
Zuma had tried to block the publication of the report arguing that he had not been granted enough time to respond to the allegations.
He stepped down this week as president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party after a 10 year term marked by numerous damning court judgments against him.
Zuma was succeeded by his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa in a tightly fought contest in which his former wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma also ran.
He is due to resign as state president after general elections in 2019.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance party said Zuma is “simply playing for time” so that “evidence can be destroyed” before he appoints the commission of inquiry.
Zuma challenges SA court over graft inquiry order
Zuma challenges SA court over graft inquiry order
Bondi Beach shooting suspect conducted firearms training with his father, Australian police say
MELBOURNE, Australia: A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach conducted firearms training in an area of New South Wales state outside of Sydney with his father, according to Australian police documents released on Monday.
The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.
Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
The state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred Monday from a hospital to a prison. Authorities identified neither facility.
The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode, the documents said.
Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.
The pair had rented a room in the Sydney suburb of Campsie for three weeks before they left at 2:16 a.m. on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five IEDs and two homemade Daesh group flags wrapped in blankets.
Police also released images of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge, providing them with an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.
The largest IED was found after the gunbattle near the footbridge in the trunk of the son’s car, which had been left draped with the flags.
Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.
The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.
The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.
The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.
Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.
Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father expressing “their political and religious views and appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”
The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to Islamic State,” police said, using another term for the Daesh Group.
Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.
“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.
An impromptu memorial that grew near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed Monday as the beachfront returned to more normal activity. The Sydney Jewish Museum will preserve part of the memorial.
Victims’ funerals continued Monday with French national Dan Elkayam’s service held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.
The health department said 12 people wounded in the attack remained in hospitals on Monday.
