COTONOU: Several people died in Benin during a thwarted coup attempt on the weekend, the west African country’s government announced Monday after an emergency cabinet meeting.
Early Sunday, “violent clashes” erupted between the coup plotters and the Republican Guard at the Cotonou residence of President Patrice Talon, resulting in “casualties on both sides,” according to the government.
Among the dead was the wife of the president’s military chief-of-staff, General Bertin Bada, who was himself fatally wounded in a separate, earlier assault by the putschists.
Some coup plotters remained at large late Monday with as many as a dozen arrested.
“The small group of soldiers who organized the mutiny planned to remove the president of the republic from office, to subjugate the Republic’s institutions and to challenge the established order,” said the government’s secretary general, Edouard Ouin-Ouro, according to cabinet meeting minutes.
“They initially attempted to neutralize or kidnap certain generals and senior army officers,” he added.
The plotters, who staged their mutiny at the Togbin base in the capital according to the government, abducted Sunday night the chief of staff of the National Guard, Faizou Gomina, and also General Abou Issa, army chief of staff.
Both men were eventually released in Tchaourou, a central city located more than 350 km (215 miles) from Cotonou.
The army “surrounded the Togbin base” on Sunday, where “targeted, surgical airstrikes were then carried out, without exposing surrounding neighborhoods” to danger, the government said.
Benin says it received military assistance for the strikes from the Nigerian army and from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which announced the deployment of soldiers from four countries in the region.
Those troops are “currently housed” at the Togbin base, which “has been retaken,” according to Ouin-Ouro.
“This operation was carried out successfully, without loss of life,” and “the last attackers ... fled,” the government stated.
‘Several’ deaths in thwarted Benin coup: government
https://arab.news/c8hda
‘Several’ deaths in thwarted Benin coup: government
- Among the dead was the wife of the president’s military chief-of-staff, who was himself fatally wounded
- Some coup plotters remained at large late Monday with as many as a dozen arrested
Activist Peter Tatchell arrested over ‘globalize the intifada’ placard
- Arrest in London during Saturday protest an ‘attack on free speech,’ his foundation says
- Intifada ‘does not mean violence and is not antisemitic,’ veteran campaigner claims
LONDON: Prominent activist Peter Tatchell was arrested at a pro-Palestine march in central London, The Independent reported.
According to his foundation, the 74-year-old was arrested for holding a placard that said: “Globalize the intifada: Nonviolent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank.”
The Peter Tatchell Foundation said in a statement that the activist labeled his Saturday arrest as an “attack on free speech.”
It added: “The police claimed the word intifada is unlawful. The word intifada is not a crime in law. The police are engaged in overreach by making it an arrestable offense.
“This is part of a dangerous trend to increasingly restrict and criminalize peaceful protests.”
Tatchell described the word “intifada,” an Arab term, as meaning “uprising, rebellion or resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
“It does not mean violence and is not antisemitic. It is against the Israeli regime and its war crimes, not against Jewish people.”
According to his foundation, Tatchell was transported to Sutton police station to be detained following his arrest.
In December last year, London’s Metropolitan Police said that pro-Palestine protesters chanting “globalize the intifada” would face arrest, attributing the new rules to a “changing context” in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia.
“Officers policing the Palestine Coalition protest have arrested a 74-year-old man on suspicion of a public order offense. He was seen carrying a sign including the words ‘globalize the intifada’,” the Metropolitan Police said on X.
According to a witness, Tatchell had been marching near police officers with the placard for about a mile when the group came across a counterprotest.
He was then stopped and “manhandled by 10 officers,” said Jacky Summerfield, who accompanied Tatchell at the protest.
“I was shoved back behind a cordon of officers and unable to speak to him after that,” she said.
“I couldn’t get any closer to hear anything more than that; it was for Section 5 (of the Public Order Act).
“There had been no issue until that. He was walking near the police officers. Nobody had said or done anything.”
