PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa: The graft trial of South African ex-president Jacob Zuma resumed on Monday, held online in a bid to forestall another wave of the deadly unrest that swept the nation after he was jailed in an unrelated case.
Although the proceedings were taking place virtually, security was tight around the High Court in the southeastern city of Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Zuma’s home region of KwaZulu-Natal, where Zuma loyalists have previously gathered in rowdy shows of support.
Armed police and soldiers, deployed to quell recent riots, secured the area around the court.
A brown military vehicle towered over armored police vehicles as a helicopter flew above, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
Zuma faces 16 charges of fraud, graft and racketeering related to the 1999 purchase of fighter jets, patrol boats and military gear from five European arms firms when he was deputy president.
He is accused of taking bribes from one of the firms, French defense giant Thales, which has been charged with corruption and money laundering.
The trial started in May after numerous postponements and delays, as Zuma’s legal team worked fervently to have the charges dropped.
Zuma, 79, spoke from his prison in the small town of Estcourt, appearing in a black suit, white shirt and red tie, sitting on a black office chair in a white-walled room.
He proclaimed his innocence when he appeared in person for the opening in May. Thales has also pleaded not guilty.
On June 29, Zuma was separately found guilty of contempt of South Africa’s top court for snubbing graft investigators probing his time as president. He was jailed on July 8.
South Africa was then plunged into chaos, with looting and rioting erupting in KwaZulu-Natal as well as in the economic hub of Johannesburg in Gauteng province, claiming more than 200 lives.
The unrest was widely seen as at least partially in response to Zuma’s imprisonment.
Monday’s hearing could reignite tensions that had eased by the weekend, analysts warn.
Zuma is being portrayed by a radical faction of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) as a hero of the poor.
“People will be watching the behavior of judges,” said Sipho Seepe, a fellow of the University of Zululand in KwaZulu-Natal.
“If they feel justice is not done, they will protest.”
Monday’s hearing is expected to focus on an application by Zuma’s legal team for chief prosecutor Billy Downer to recuse himself from the case over claims he leaked information to the media.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said it would “vigorously” oppose the application.
The trial is resuming virtually to avoid “disruption,” NPA spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga said, although other court cases are also being heard online due to the pandemic.
Defense lawyers claim the virtual format is unconstitutional and have applied for the trial to be adjourned.
Zuma and his backers have repeatedly dismissed scrutiny of the ex-president’s conduct as politically motivated and warned his jailing would spark unrest.
But they deny being behind the recent turmoil.
Zuma, once dubbed the “Teflon president,” is meanwhile seeking to overturn his 15-month jail sentence.
He was arrested for disobeying a Constitutional Court order to testify before a judicial panel probing corruption during his presidency.
Jacob Zuma’s graft trial resumes after deadly South Africa violence
https://arab.news/98cf7
Jacob Zuma’s graft trial resumes after deadly South Africa violence
- Former South African president faces 16 charges of fraud, graft and racketeering related to the 1999 purchase of military arms
Turkiye in new bid to revive Somalia-Ethiopia talks
ISTANBUL: Turkiye will hold separate talks with Horn of Africa rivals Somalia and Ethiopia to ease tensions before a new round of Ankara-hosted talks, the foreign minister said on Thursday.
Relations between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa have soured dramatically since Ethiopia struck a controversial maritime deal in January with the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland.
The memorandum of understanding gives Ethiopia — one of the world’s biggest landlocked countries — access to the sea, but Somalia has condemned it as an assault on its sovereignty.
Turkiye, which has been conducting shuttle diplomacy between Ethiopian and Somalian foreign ministers since the summer, mediated two rounds of talks in July and August.
The third round, which was supposed to take place on Tuesday, was canceled as Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara would rather meet them separately before another round of talks.
“Because there are some lessons we learned from the previous two rounds of talks,” Fidan told the Anadolu news agency.
Fidan said he would directly talk to the two parties to “bring their positions closer” and help them reach a deal.
Under the Jan. 1 deal with Addis Ababa, Somaliland agreed to lease 20 km of its coast for 50 years to Ethiopia, which wants to set up a naval base and a commercial port.
Somaliland has said Ethiopia would give it formal recognition in return, although Addis Ababa has never confirmed this.
Somaliland, a former British protectorate of 4.5 million people, unilaterally declared independence in 1991, but the international community has never recognized the move. Addis Ababa had access to a port in Eritrea until the two countries went to war between 1998 and 2000. Since then, Ethiopia has sent most of its sea trade through Djibouti.
Fidan said he was hopeful about a deal between the two rivals.
“I believe we have brought the parties closer to a certain degree. Hopefully, we will continue this ... I am hopeful,” he said.
Russia attacks Ukraine geriatric center and power grid
- Moscow says it is advancing in eastern Ukraine
- Ukraine faces winter power shortfall, IEA says
KYIV: Russian forces hit a geriatric center in the Ukrainian city of Sumy and targeted its energy sector in a new wave of airstrikes on Thursday, killing at least one civilian, Ukrainian officials said.
A UN monitoring body said attacks on the power grid probably violated humanitarian law while the International Energy Agency said in a report that Ukraine’s electricity supply shortfall in the critical winter months could reach about a third of expected peak demand.
During a daytime strike on the northern city of Sumy, a Russian guided bomb hit a five-story building, regional and military officials said.
One person was killed and 12 wounded, the interior ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said rescue teams were checking to see whether people were trapped under rubble.
Images from the site shared alongside the ministry’s post showed elderly patients evacuated from the damaged building lying on the ground on carpets and blankets.
In his nightly video address, Zelensky said that Russia had launched 90 guided bomb attacks in the past 24 hours
He also said that Ukraine’s forces had “managed to diminish the occupiers’ assault potential in Donetsk region,” though the situation remained difficult in areas subjected to the heaviest attacks, near the cities of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had captured the village of Heorhiivka, east of Kurakhove.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s military, in an afternoon report, referred to the village as one of several engulfed by fighting. Popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said the village was in Russian hands.
Overnight, Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down all 42 drones and one of four missiles launched since Russia invaded Ukraine more than 2-1/2 years ago.
Russian forces have pummelled the energy system in the Sumy region in multiple strikes this week, reducing power in some areas and forcing authorities to use back-up power systems.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said power cuts had been in force in 10 regions due to airstrikes and technological reasons.
In a sign of its concern, the European Union said a fuel power plant was being dismantled in Lithuania to be rebuilt in Ukraine, and that electricity exports would also be increased.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said Russia’s attacks violated international humanitarian law by jeopardizing essential services, including water and heating, while also threatening public health, education and the economy, according to the report.
Kyiv says targeting energy system is a war crime, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for four Russian officials and military officers for the bombing of civilian power infrastructure.
Moscow says power infrastructure is a legitimate military target and dismisses the charges as irrelevant.
Sumy a frequent target
Moscow has repeatedly attacked the Sumy region, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, the site of a major Ukrainian incursion in which Kyiv says it seized over 100 settlements. Russian shelling killed three people near Krasnopillia in the Sumy region on Wednesday evening, local prosecutors said. More shelling on Thursday wounded two people and damaged a medical institution, they added.
Russia has taken back two more villages in Kursk, a senior commander said on Thursday, adding that Russian forces were also advancing in eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky, however, said the incursion into Kursk region had succeeded in diverting nearly 40,000 Russian troops to the area.
Mission specialist for Titan sub owner tells Coast Guard goal was to ‘make dreams come true’
- Five people were killed last year when Titan submersible imploded last year enroute to Titanic wreck
- The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration
A mission specialist for the company that owned the Titan submersible that imploded last year told the US Coast Guard on Thursday that the firm was staffed by competent people who wanted to “make dreams come true.”
Renata Rojas was the latest person to testify who was connected to Titan owner OceanGate. An investigatory panel had previously listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.
Rojas’ testimony struck a different tone than some of the earlier witnesses, who described the company as troubled from the top down and focused more on profit than science or safety.
“I was learning a lot and working with amazing people,” Rojas said. “Some of those people are very hardworking individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true.”
Rojas also said she felt the company was sufficiently transparent during the run-up to the Titanic dive. Her testimony was emotional at times, with the Coast Guard panel proposing a brief break at one point so she could collect herself.
Rojas is a member of the Explorers Club, which lost members Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet in the Titan implosion. The club described Rush as “a friend of The Explorers Club” after the implosion.
“I knew what I was doing was very risky. I never at any point felt unsafe by the operation,” Rojas said in testimony Thursday.
Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on problems the company had prior to the fatal 2023 dive.
During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.
“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”
Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come and resume next week.
Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.
During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.
When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said.
No one on board survived. Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were the other two people killed in the implosion.
OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.
UK urged to scrap ‘racist’ visa route
- Long and expensive visa route for immigrants has been labeled ‘racist’ after analysis showed most applicants who feel forced to go through it are people of color
- Analysis of Home Office data showed that all but one country in the top 10 nationalities who felt forced to use the route were those with predominantly non-white populations
LONDON: The UK has been urged to scrap a 10-year visa route and cap all routes to settlement in the country at five years.
The long and expensive visa route for immigrants has been labeled “racist” after analysis showed most applicants who feel forced to go through it are people of color, according to a report in The Guardian.
The 10-year route to a visa is used by hundreds of thousands of people who are not eligible for other immigration schemes because of a lack of income or professional qualifications. Many work in low-paid jobs, such as cleaning or care work. Other common routes to settlement in the UK take five years.
According to freedom of information data obtained by the charity Ramfel, there are 218,110 people on the 10-year route.
Analysis of Home Office data showed that all but one country in the top 10 nationalities who felt forced to use the route were those with predominantly non-white populations. The top five were Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Ghana and Bangladesh. Overall, 86 percent of people using the route were from Asian or African countries, while 6 percent were from Europe.
People seeking to gain a visa via the 10-year route must renew their leave to remain with the Home Office every 30 months, meaning four renewals. The fee for each renewal is £3,850 ($5,095). The Home Office can grant a fee waiver but many requests are refused.
According to a 2023 report on the 10-year route by the legal advice and support service Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, the think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research and the charity Praxis, the most common way of covering the fees was to borrow money, with many people remaining in debt afterward and struggling to pay for basic living costs.
A GMIAU spokesperson said: “These numbers confirm what people on the 10-year route already know: It is a racist policy. People are being driven into debt, forced to choose between paying thousands of pounds in visa fees to keep their legal status and keeping their families fed and warm.
“Ten years is far too long for anyone to wait to settle. The route must be scrapped. A good place to start would be to cap all routes to settlement at five years.”
Nick Beales, of Ramfel, said: “The 10-year route is an enduring legacy of the hostile environment. Like many other Conservative policies from this period, the racist intent is clear, with African and South Asian nationals far more likely to be placed on this arduous and often brutal route toward securing permanent immigration status.”
New hope in Rohingya camps as Bangladesh’s Nobel-winning leader pledges support
COX’S BAZAR: Mohammad Jamal heard about Dr. Muhammad Yunus long before the economist became the head of Bangladesh’s new government last month. Like many other Rohingya refugees, he is now pinning his hopes on the Nobel prizewinner changing his life.
An internationally renowned microfinance pioneer who in 2006 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, Yunus was appointed to lead Bangladesh’s interim administration following the ousting of veteran prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
With strong ties to the international community, donors and Western governments, he has promised reforms and also support to the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees that Bangladesh is hosting.
“We have heard of Dr. Yunus earlier many times. He raised his voice for our wellbeing in different international media earlier also. Since he is a Nobel laureate, people know him across the world as well (as) in Bangladesh. He is a very good person,” said Jamal, a 27-year-old living in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.
A coastal district in Bangladesh’s east, Cox’s Bazar became the world’s largest refugee settlement with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing death in neighboring Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017.
Referred to as ethnic cleansing and genocide by various UN agencies, International Criminal Court officials, human rights groups and governments, the global outrage over the violence against the Rohingya initially brought robust aid to Bangladesh to help it support them, but it has rapidly declined over the years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The World Food Programme last year even resorted to reducing the value of its food assistance to those living in Cox’s Bazar camps.
As Yunus has been credited with lifting millions of Bangladeshis out of poverty through his microlending programs, the Rohingya believe he will find a way to help them, too.
“Refugee life is not a dignified one. For everything, we need to ask or depend on aid. If we could be provided with some livelihood training and then informal working opportunities, it would make us self-reliant to some extent,” said Amena Begum, a 38-year-old mother of three.
“I heard that he spent years of his life for the well-being of the rural people, especially for empowering the women. So, I hope that he will take some initiatives for changing the fate of the Rohingya women also.”
In his first major government policy address in late August, Yunus pledged that his government “will continue to support the million-plus Rohingya people sheltered in Bangladesh” and that it needs the “sustained efforts of the international community for Rohingya humanitarian operations and their eventual repatriation to their homeland, Myanmar, with safety, dignity and full rights.”
Despite multiple attempts from Bangladeshi authorities, a UN-backed repatriation and resettlement process for the Rohingya has failed to take off for the past few years, as in Myanmar they are denied the most basic rights.
Currently, it is also not possible as violence in their home Rakhine state has escalated in recent months amid fighting between Myanmar’s ruling junta and the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic militia.
With a new wave of those fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh, Yunus earlier this month called for a fast-tracked third-country resettlement of Rohingya — a plan that has been on the table for years but has so far resulted in insignificant response abroad.
But before that happens, refugees hope there are ways in which Yunus’s government will improve on the previous regime’s handling of the crisis.
With Bangladesh not being a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the Rohingya do not have access to formal education and cannot be legally employed to earn their livelihood.
“As a Nobel peace laureate, I hope he will stand beside the genocide survivors and oppressed Rohingyas, (that) he will provide us with better education opportunities until we get the chance of repatriation,” said Mohammad Rizwan, 26-year-old Rohingya volunteer and activist in Cox’s Bazar.
“As a Nobel laureate, he understands the importance of the rights for human beings and the agony of having a life without rights. That’s why we are expecting that, Dr. Yunus will do something new for us.”
