News & Announcements

It was a celebration of sorts among family and friends as the longest-serving Jordanian prisoner in an Israeli jail, Abdullah Abu Jaber, arrived home after completing a 20-year sentence for planting a bomb on an Israeli bus.

Jaber, 44, was arrested after the explosive device went off on the bus in Tel Aviv and injured more than a dozen people in December 2000.

He was one of the thousands of Jordanians who found casual work in Israel after the two countries normalised ties with a peace treaty in 1994.

Abu Jaber, who was among 22 prisoners held in Israeli jails, headed to his parent’s home in the teeming Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp near the Jordanian capital Amman, witnesses said.

Separately, foreign ministry officials said Israel had dropped charges against two Jordanians who were arrested last month for allegedly crossing the border carrying knives.

The authorities had put them on trial shortly after their arrival.

Jordan, which has the longest border with Israel, is a close Western ally.

Last month, it witnessed large protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and its crackdown on Palestinian worshippers and protesters in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Political ties between the two countries have been strained over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and the Jordanian government has faced growing public pressure to scrap the unpopular peace treaty.

Most of Jordan’s 10 million citizens are of Palestinian origin. They, or their parents, were expelled or fled to Jordan in the 1948 war to establish the state of Israel.

They have close family ties with their kins on the other side of the Jordan River in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, both captured by Israel in the 1967 war.

The United States has Imposes a Visa ban on those it viewed as undermining peace efforts in Cameroon following the escalated crisis between government forces and separatist groups in the English-speaking area.

Cameroon’s two western Anglophone regions have been gripped by fighting since 2017 as the rebels try to break away from the predominantly Francophone government. More than 3,500 people have died and 700,000 have been displaced in the violence.

Announcing the visa sanctions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was deeply concerned by the continued insecurity and called for both sides to negotiate for peace.

“This decision reflects our commitment to advance a dialogue to peacefully resolve the Anglophone crisis and support respect for human rights,” he said in a statement.

He did not say which individuals might be affected by the visa restrictions.

Reuters reports that rights groups accuse both sides of committing atrocities. While the government typically dismisses these accusations, it has, in a few cases, subsequently arrested soldiers and accused them of being involved in killings and torture.

In 2019, the Trump administration ended Cameroon’s preferential trade benefits citing extrajudicial killings, torture, and other human rights violations being committed by Cameroonian security forces.

Brenda Nantongo, the slain daughter of Uganda’s outgoing Transport and Works minister Gen Katumba Wamala, will be buried on Thursday in Kikandwa village, Mukono District in the central region of the country, while dressed in a wedding gown.

The 32-year-old died Tuesday after the car she was in came under attack from gunmen in an assassination attempt on her father in Kisaasi, a Kampala suburb.

Brenda’s mother, Ms Christine Katumba, said the family decided to bury her in a wedding dress because she had always looked forward to having a wedding, adding that they had broached the subject of marriage several times in conversations.

 “I don’t usually speak at functions, but I had committed to speak at Brenda’s wedding and she would say ‘I would wear a gown of this make’ and she would say ‘I don’t like a certain make’ and, so, we knew exactly what she would wear [on her wedding day],” she said.

Speaking in Luganda at a funeral service on Wednesday evening, Ms Katumba added: “And, so, I decided that my daughter had to wear a gown. Even if she is dead, let her wear it in a coffin, let us throw this wedding as her last celebration.”

Indeed, at the service, Brenda’s body was in a glittering hard-wood casket in a sleeveless, round-necked cream satin gown with white pearls. A cocktail hat was clipped to her trimmed hair. 

The service, according to Nation Africa was an emotional affair as each speaker talked about her untimely death. Brenda’s younger sister Belinda Katumba, who is currently in Canada, in a message read by their brother Julius Katumba spoke of how the deceased had plans to start a family.

“I cannot believe that my sister is gone. Just yesterday (Monday), we spoke during the day crying about the death of our grandmother, not knowing that I would spend the next day mourning Brenda,” Belinda said. “I will miss your laugh, our weekly drives with mom to visit grandma.”

One of her aunties said they often teased Brenda about getting married and that, unlike other girls, she never answered them rudely or barked at them, often responding that she would marry at the appropriate time.

“I would ask her when she would bring a man home and whether we would not fall while greeting [guests] during the marriage [due to old age as she continued delaying to marry],” Gen Katumba’s elder sister told mourners while speaking in Luganda.

Another mourner, Ms. Stella Kisekka, said: “I had to pick out a gown for Brenda. I had to do her make-up.”

People who promote insurrection in Nigeria face a “rude shock”, its president warned on Tuesday, raising the possibility of a fierce crackdown on rising violence in the southeast that has included arson attacks on a Police station and electoral offices.

Security forces, according to Reuters, are already grappling with criminal gangs in the northwest who carry out mass kidnappings for ransom, a decade-old Islamist insurgency in the northeast, and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea off Nigeria’s southern coast.

Electoral offices and police stations have been burned down in recent months across the southeast, a region where armed gangs have carried out a series of killings of police officers, prompting a police operation in May. 

Nigerian authorities have blamed those attacks on a banned separatist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and what police call its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network. But the IPOB has repeatedly denied involvement. 

The statement issued by the office of President Muhammadu Buhari, who previously led Nigeria as a military ruler in the early 1980s, said “a rude shock” awaits “those bent on destroying the country through promoting insurrection, and burning down critical national assets”.

It referred to the 1967-70 civil war fought over the secession of an area in Nigeria’s far southeast called Biafra that killed one million people.

“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through (that) war, will treat them in the language they understand. We are going to be very hard sooner than later,” Buhari, who served in the army against the secessionists, was quoted as saying.

On Monday the streets of towns across the southeast were quiet and businesses were shuttered after the IPOB urged people to stay at home to commemorate those who died in the war.

The presidency statement said there had been 42 attacks on offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission in recent months across 14 states.

The African Union has followed in the footsteps of the regional ECOWAS in suspending Mali in response to last week’s military coup and threatened sanctions if a civilian-led government is not restored, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The military arrested interim President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane last week and pressured them to resign, derailing a transition to democratic elections after another military coup last August ousted the previous administration.

Former vice president Assimi Goita, a colonel, who led the August coup and last week’s revolt, was declared president on Friday. 

The African Union called for “an unimpeded, transparent and swift return to the civilian-led transition … failing which, the Council will not hesitate to impose targeted sanctions,” the AU’s Peace and Security Council said.

Mali’s neighbours and international powers fear the latest revolt would jeopardise a commitment to hold a presidential election in February and undermine a regional fight against Islamist militants, some of which are based in Mali’s desert north.

The African Union suspended Mali after last August’s coup but reinstated the country a few weeks later after the heads of the new civilian-led transitional government were announced.

Twitter has deleted a tweet wherein President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria threatened what many security experts had termed genocidal threats against separatists like the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), who are calling for self-realization from the eastern part of the country.

He said he would “deal with ‘people who didn’t learn from the civil war.

Buhari’s tweet was deleted for allegedly violating the Twitter rules.

“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War.

“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” Buhari had tweeted on Tuesday.

The president’s tweet was in reaction to widespread attacks on public facilities by unknown arsonists in the South East region.

The tweet, however, sparked outrage on Tuesday evening with many social media users describing it as ‘genocidal’ and a direct threat to people of the South-East region of Nigeria.

Meanwhile, several Twitter users reported the President’s Twitter account.

In Twitter Rules and policies, the company explains the process of removing a tweet considered to have violated its rules.

“When we determine that a Tweet violated the Twitter Rules, we require the violator to remove it before they can Tweet again. 

“We send an email notification to the violator identifying the Tweet(s) in violation and which policies have been violated. 

“They will then need to go through the process of removing the violating Tweet or appealing our review if they believe we made an error,” it wrote.

United Nations representatives have denounced the potential forced expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as a “violation of international law”.

Speaking from Sheikh Jarrah on Wednesday, UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said: “This eviction violates international law and Israel’s obligation as an occupying power. For UNRWA, these Palestinian refugees are experiencing the second displacement in living memory.”

He said as the head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees it is his job “to protect and assist Palestinian refugees”.

“I have made it our priority to help prevent another cycle of trauma and loss,” Lazzarini added.

Aljazeera reports that Sheikh Jarrah has been the site of continuing demonstrations as dozens of Palestinians living there face forced expulsion in a case filed against them by Jewish settler organisations.

Mass protests against their forced dispossession in May quickly spread across historic Palestine and caught the attention of the international media.

An Israeli crackdown on protesters spread to Al-AqsaMosque, where Israeli security forces stormed the compound numerous times during the holy month of Ramadan, wounding hundreds of Muslim worshippers.

On May 9, under pressure, the Israeli high court delayed the ruling on the expulsion of four Palestinian families. A new court date will be announced in 30 days, it said.

“It is very difficult to explain how the lives of these eight families risk being turned upside down for the second time within nearly three generations of being Palestinian refugees,” said Lazzarini.

“I saw one home which Israeli settlers have already taken over half of the house. The house is actually divided into two – a Palestinian family and a settler family. It is surreal.”

He said the UNRWA continues to call on Israeli authorities to “end this displacement” and “protect the rights and dignity” of Palestinians in the occupied territories, including in Sheikh Jarrah.

Reporting from West Jerusalem, Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett said “there has been massing international pressure on this issue”.

“Israel’s foreign minister was at the beginning of May talking about this as a private land dispute. That is not the story as far as the international community and law and the Palestinians are concerned. This is occupied territory beholden to international law, and Israel has a responsibility towards the Palestinian families there.

“Israel is coming under mounting pressure. There is now a political element as far as Israel is concerned,” said Fawcett, adding Israel’s attorney general has until June 8 to give his legal opinion on the matter.

Also speaking from Sheikh Jarrah, Gwyn Lewis, director of UNRWA affairs in the occupied West Bank, said the Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah have the right to support from UNRWA.

“The families never, ever lost their Palestine refugee status,” said Lewis. “They are recognised as Palestinian refugees, are registered with UNRWA as Palestine refugees, and have the right to receive support from UNRWA like other Palestine refugees.”

A heavy presence of police and paramilitary forces has blocked access to Sheikh Jarrah since May 14, according to Palestinian activists.

The closure has intensified with the entry of supporters of Palestinian residents banned because of “the so-called risk of clashes”, but these restrictions are not imposed on supporters of Jewish settlers living there, Israeli NGO Ir Amim told Al Jazeera last month.

Meanwhile, Palestinian families are living inside “a cordoned-off military-like zone”.

“They are subject to ongoing arbitrary harassment and aggressive police measures,” marked by forced entry into homes and the use of stun grenades, skunk water and rubber-tipped bullets against neighbourhood residents, said the NGO.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday recognized his country’s role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, from backing a genocidal regime to ignoring warnings of the impending massacres.

“Standing here today, with humility and respect, by your side, I have come to recognise our responsibilities,” Macron said in a speech at the Kigali Genocide Memorial.

Macron is the first French leader since 2010 to visit the East African nation, which has long accused France of complicity in the killing of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi Rwandans.

“But France has a role, a story and a political responsibility to Rwanda. She has a duty: to face history head-on and recognise the suffering she has inflicted on the Rwandan people by too long valuing silence over the examination of the truth”.

While some had been hoping for a full apology, Macron’s comments went further than his predecessors and he said that only those who had survived the horrors “can maybe forgive, give us the gift of forgiveness.”

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed Major General Farouk Yahaya as the new Chief of Army Staff.

Yahaya replaces Lt General Attahiru was killed in a plane crash on Friday.

Prior to his appointment Major General Yahaya was the General Officer Commanding 1 Division of the Nigerian Army and the incumbent Theatre Commander of the Counter-terrorism Counter-insurgency military outfit in the North East code named  Operation HADIN KAI.

Germany has recognized for the first time that it committed genocide in Namibia during its colonial rule more than a century ago and promised financial support worth more than one billion euros ($1.2bn) to fund infrastructure projects in the African nation.

German settlers killed thousands of Herero and Nama people between 1904 and 1908, after the tribes rebelled against Berlin’s rule in the colony, then called German South-West Africa.

Survivors, according to Aljazeera, were driven into the desert, where many ended up in concentration camps to be used as slave labour and many died from cold, malnutrition and exhaustion.

“We will now officially refer to these events as what they are from today’s perspective: genocide,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement on Friday.

“In light of the historical and moral responsibility of Germany, we will ask forgiveness from Namibia and the victims’ descendants for the atrocities committed,” he said.

The news was welcomed by Namibia. “The acceptance on the part of Germany that a genocide was committed is the first step in the right direction,” the country’s President Hage Geingob’s spokesman Alfredo Hengari told the AFP news agency.

“It is the basis for the second step, which is an apology, to be followed by reparations,” he said.

The German government has previously acknowledged “moral responsibility” for the killings but Berlin has avoided an official apology to ward off compensation claims.

As a gesture “to recognise the immense suffering inflicted on victims”, Germany will also support the “reconstruction and the development” of Namibia via a financial programme of 1.1 billion euros ($1.34bn), Maas said.

The sum will be paid over 30 years, according to sources close to the negotiations and must primarily benefit the descendants of the Herero and Nama.

Maas, however, stopped short of referring to reparations, saying the payment did not open the way to any “legal request for compensation.”

Germany ruled Namibia from 1884 until it lost the colony during World War I.

In 1904, tensions boiled over when the Herero – deprived of their livestock and land – rose up, followed shortly after by the Nama.

German General Lothar von Trotha, sent to put down the rebellion, ordered the peoples’ extermination.

At least 60,000 Hereros and about 10,000 Namas were killed between 1904 and 1908.

Colonial soldiers carried out mass executions; exiled men, women, and children to the desert where thousands died of thirst; and established infamous concentration camps, such as the one on Shark Island.

The atrocities have poisoned relations between Berlin and Windhoek for years.

In 2015, Germany began formal negotiations with Namibia over the issue and in 2018 it returned skulls and other remains of massacred tribespeople that were used in the colonial-era experiments to assert claims of European racial superiority.

On Thursday,  Hengari told the Reuters news agency that a joint declaration outlining the agreement was made by special envoys of both countries on May 15, at the end of the ninth round of negotiations over the issue.

Hengari also said an official apology from Germany was expected, adding that “implementation modalities can only commence after the president has spoken to affected communities”.

Herero Paramount Chief Vekuii Rukoro told Reuters the reported settlement was a “sellout”.

The chief, who unsuccessfully sued Germany for compensation in the United States, said the agreement was not enough for the two communities, which had suffered “irreversible harm” at the hands of German colonial forces.

“We have a problem with that kind of an agreement, which we feel constitutes a complete sellout on the part of the Namibian government,” Rukoro said.