Politics
The Former head of the intelligence service of Burundi, General Godefroid Nyombare, has announced the removal of President Pierre Nkurunziza, who is presently en route to Dar es Salaam for a summit on the Burundi crisis. Godefroid Nyombare, a former senior Burundian army officer said on Wednesday that he ousted President Pierre Nkurunziza because his candidacy for a third term has caused nearly three weeks of a bloody political crisis in Burundi.
President Pierre Nkurunziza has now been removed from office and the government dissolved. General Nyombare who was sacked in February by the head of state after having recommended that President Nkurunziza should not seek a third mandate is now in charge. Soldiers have taken up positions around state radio and television. President Nkurunziza is currently in Tanzania for a summit on the crisis in Burundi.
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Global media are assessing Iran's recent announcement over the purchase of several commercial airliners as a sign that the crippling sanctions against Iran are already beginning to collapse. Bloomberg in a report says the delivery of the planes – that come at a crucial moment of nuclear talks between Iran and P5+1 – have added to several other emerging signs that the world is impatient with the removal of the US-engineered sanctions. “Last month Russia's president Vladimir Putin announced he would resume the sale of a sophisticated air defense system, known as the S300, to Iran,” it said in its report. “Western oil companies are already meeting with Iranian officials to discuss how to get back into the country's lucrative oil and gas markets.”
On Sunday, Iran's Minister of Road and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi told reporters that the country is in the process of buying a number of new planes. The new purchases, he said, are in order to renovate the sector despite international sanctions imposed on the country over its peaceful nuclear program. “We have conducted extensive negotiations with companies supplying planes … so that when sanctions are removed, contracts can be signed immediately,” said Akhoundi. Mahan Air has been quoted in the media as the Iranian airline that will acquire most of the new planes. This is while it is already in the list of sanctioned Iranian companies and plane makers are thus prohibited from any dealings with it.
Bloomberg has quoted analysts as saying that news over Mahan Air’s emerging plane purchase deals show how the sanctions against Iran were collapsing ahead of the June 30 deadline for a nuclear deal between Iran and P5+1. “Mahan Air’s case shows that US sanctions no longer deter Western companies from doing big business with Iran," Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank that has advocated for tough sanctions on Iran, has told Bloomberg. Earlier in April, head of Iran Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) said the country needs to buy up to 500 passenger planes in the next 10 years to renovate its aging fleet. Ali Reza Jahangirian added that Iranian airlines are currently operating with a fleet of about 140 aircraft, which is “very lower than average international norms in terms of international indexes of population and area.” On May 4, vice president of Boeing for sales in Middle East, Russia, and Central Asia, told a United Arab Emirates newspaper that his company has set its sights on the Iranian aviation market and expects a “very strong” demand in the country. “We’ve done a pretty good assessment on our side and we think the demand, should things open up, would be very strong,” Martin Bentrott added.
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Outgoing Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said Sunday that some of his friends deserted him shortly after he conceded defeat to his rival General Muhammadu Buhari in the March election. Jonathan publicly conceded defeat to Buhari on March 31, a decision which was commended by local and foreign commentators and doused tension in the country. "Some hard decisions have their own costs. No doubt about that. It is a very costly decision but I must be very ready to pay for it," Jonathan said during a farewell church service in Abuja.
Jonathan's public admission of defeat in the nail-biting election came more than six hours after he rang Buhari to concede, earning him widespread praise for statesmanship. "If you take certain decisions, you should know that people close to you will even abandon you at some point. I tell people that more of my so-called friends will disappear." Many party faithful and erstwhile loyalists of Jonathan have either crossed over to Buhari's All Progressives Congress or made harsh statements against Jonathan's party or its leaders.
Jonathan said he was not surprised by the desertions or statements by his former loyalists, adding that former South African president Frederik de Klerk faced a similar situation when he decided to abolish minority rule in that country. Jonathan said that de Klerk's marriage to his wife, Marike, broke down after he took that decision. "But that is the only decision that made South Africa to still be a global player. If by this time w still have minority rule in South africa, nobody would have been talking about South Africa in the present generation," he said. He said that ministers who served under him should brace themselves for "persecution" following his loss and his decision to concede defeat.Buhari, a former military leader, is scheduled to be sworn into office on May 29.
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Saadi Gaddafi, the son of Colonel Gaddafi who fled abroad during Libya’s 2011 revolution and was extradited from Niger last year, has appeared before a Tripoli court. Gaddafi is being tried for killing a football player and unlawful imprisonment. But the judge adjourned his case until July, after defence lawyers asked for more time.
The 41-year-old, who had a brief career as a football player in Italy and had the reputation of a playboy during his father’s long rule, appeared in the Tripoli courtroom wearing a blue jumpsuit and watched the proceedings from behind bars. Since escaping Libya in 2011, Saadi had been held under house arrest in the Niger capital Niamey. He was extradited back to Libya in March 2014.
Col Gaddafi’s more prominent son, Saif al-Islam, is being held captive by fighters in the western Libyan town of Zintan. They refuse to hand him over to a government they deem too weak to hold him. Since the 2011 fall of Col Gaddafi, Libya has slipped deeper into chaos with two rival governments and the armed factions that back them fighting for control. Islamist militants have gained ground during the period of lawlessness.
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Border guards have foiled an attempt to smuggle an eight-year old boy into Spain in a suitcase. The boy, from the Ivory Coast was discovered at the border of Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The suitcase was carried by a young woman of 19, which was checked when she crossed into the small territory situated in the north of Morocco. “Passing the suitcase through the scanner, the operator observed something strange, what appeared to be a person in the suitcase,” a spokesman for the Civil Guard said. “When he opened it, he found a child in a terrible state.”
The young woman who was with him, who is not believed to be his mother, was arrested. A few hours later, the boy’s father was arrested while passing through customs. A native of the Ivory Coast, he lives in the Spanish Canary Islands and is thought to have been trying to smuggle in his son to join him. Earlier this week, a 23 year old Moroccan migrant was found dehydrated in a container in the port of Melilla, another Spanish enclave in Morocco. He had spent four days trapped without water and without food.
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