GOMA, DR Congo: The M23 armed group, which controls large parts of eastern DR Congo, on Friday described a call by the French president to reopen Goma airport as “inopportune.”
President Emmanuel Macron said the key airport would open “in the coming weeks” for humanitarian flights, during an international conference on Thursday on the crisis in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The region — bordering Rwanda with abundant natural resources but plagued by non-state armed groups — has suffered extreme violence for more than three decades.
The crisis intensified with the 2021 resurgence of the M23 — a Rwandan-backed armed group fighting the Kinshasa authorities — and came to a head early this year when the militia seized the key cities of Goma and Bukavu.
Goma airport was the scene of fierce fighting during the city’s capture in January and has since remained closed.
The M23, which was not invited to the Paris conference on supporting peace and prosperity in the Great Lakes region, “considers inopportune France’s call for the reopening” of Goma airport, spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka said in a statement.
“Such an initiative must only be undertaken within the framework of negotiations currently under way in Doha under Qatari mediation,” he added.
The Congolese government and the M23 signed a declaration of principles on July 19 in Qatar that included a “permanent ceasefire” aimed at halting the conflict.
It followed a separate US-brokered peace deal between the Congolese and Rwandan governments signed in Washington in June.
However, efforts to end the conflict have proved slow to take effect on the ground.
Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe has also expressed doubts.
“Paris cannot reopen an airport, as the primary stakeholders are absent,” he said on Thursday, referring to the M23 group.
Humanitarian officials have voiced doubts, too, about a possible reopening and underlined that the land route remains essential for delivering aid to areas under M23 control.
The M23 said in its statement that there was “no longer a humanitarian emergency” in areas under its control.
After seizing Goma, the M23 ordered displaced people living on the outskirts of the city to return home and in a few days emptied makeshift camps where hundreds of thousands had been living in dire conditions.
The Paris conference raised more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in international aid for the region, Macron announced.
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France’s call for Goma airport to reopen ‘inopportune’: M23 group
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France’s call for Goma airport to reopen ‘inopportune’: M23 group
- President Emmanuel Macron said the key airport would open “in the coming weeks” for humanitarian flights
- Goma airport was the scene of fierce fighting during the city’s capture in January and has since remained closed
New Zealand mosque killer appeal causing ‘distress’ to victims: lawyer
WELLINGTON: Appeal hearings for a white supremacist who shot dead 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in 2019 caused “immense distress” to his victims, a lawyer representing the state said Friday as proceedings wrapped up.
Brenton Tarrant, a 35-year-old Australian former gym instructor, admitted carrying out New Zealand’s deadliest modern-day mass shooting before being sentenced to life in jail in August 2020.
The convicted killer argued this week in Wellington’s Court of Appeal that “torturous and inhumane” detention conditions had made him incapable of making rational decisions when he pleaded guilty, according to a court synopsis of the case.
As a week of hearings came to a close on Friday, Crown lawyer Madeleine Laracy urged the court to dismiss Tarrant’s case because he had no legal defense to offer at trial and conviction was certain, state broadcaster RNZ reported.
She urged the court to give closure to the victims and the wider Muslim community.
“There are literally hundreds of directly harmed victims in this case and keeping this case alive is a source of immense distress for those individuals,” Laracy said, according to RNZ.
The three judges did not give a decision on Friday in his case.
Tarrant is being held in a specialist unit for prisoners of extreme risk at Auckland Prison, seldom interacting with inmates or other people.
- Life sentence -
On Monday, he gave evidence via video link and said he did not have the “mind frame or mental health required” to give an informed guilty plea in 2020.
But Laracy told the three-judge panel on Friday that Tarrant was always going to end up in prison whether he had pleaded guilty or not.
“He was between a rock and a rock,” she said.
Tarrant’s lawyers, whose names are suppressed for security reasons, said his prison conditions were unlike anything else in the system.
If the court upholds Tarrant’s conviction, it will also need to consider an appeal against his sentence.
If his conviction is overturned, the case will be sent to the High Court for a retrial.
Armed with an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons, Tarrant attacked worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, 2019.
He published an online manifesto before the attacks and then livestreamed the killings for 17 minutes.
His victims were all Muslim and included children, women and the elderly.
His penalty of life imprisonment without parole was the stiffest in New Zealand history.
There were heavy restrictions on who could be in court during the appeal hearing, with only counsel, media and court officials allowed.
Families and friends of those killed or wounded in the attacks were invited to watch proceedings in Christchurch remotely by video with a one-hour delay.
Brenton Tarrant, a 35-year-old Australian former gym instructor, admitted carrying out New Zealand’s deadliest modern-day mass shooting before being sentenced to life in jail in August 2020.
The convicted killer argued this week in Wellington’s Court of Appeal that “torturous and inhumane” detention conditions had made him incapable of making rational decisions when he pleaded guilty, according to a court synopsis of the case.
As a week of hearings came to a close on Friday, Crown lawyer Madeleine Laracy urged the court to dismiss Tarrant’s case because he had no legal defense to offer at trial and conviction was certain, state broadcaster RNZ reported.
She urged the court to give closure to the victims and the wider Muslim community.
“There are literally hundreds of directly harmed victims in this case and keeping this case alive is a source of immense distress for those individuals,” Laracy said, according to RNZ.
The three judges did not give a decision on Friday in his case.
Tarrant is being held in a specialist unit for prisoners of extreme risk at Auckland Prison, seldom interacting with inmates or other people.
- Life sentence -
On Monday, he gave evidence via video link and said he did not have the “mind frame or mental health required” to give an informed guilty plea in 2020.
But Laracy told the three-judge panel on Friday that Tarrant was always going to end up in prison whether he had pleaded guilty or not.
“He was between a rock and a rock,” she said.
Tarrant’s lawyers, whose names are suppressed for security reasons, said his prison conditions were unlike anything else in the system.
If the court upholds Tarrant’s conviction, it will also need to consider an appeal against his sentence.
If his conviction is overturned, the case will be sent to the High Court for a retrial.
Armed with an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons, Tarrant attacked worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, 2019.
He published an online manifesto before the attacks and then livestreamed the killings for 17 minutes.
His victims were all Muslim and included children, women and the elderly.
His penalty of life imprisonment without parole was the stiffest in New Zealand history.
There were heavy restrictions on who could be in court during the appeal hearing, with only counsel, media and court officials allowed.
Families and friends of those killed or wounded in the attacks were invited to watch proceedings in Christchurch remotely by video with a one-hour delay.
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