Connect with us

Headline

Ex-Chadian PM Masra Jailed For Hate Speech, Xenophobia

Published

on

A court in Chad jailed former prime minister and opposition leader Succes Masra for 20 years Saturday, convicting him of hate speech, xenophobia, and having incited a massacre.

The court in N’Djamena jailed Masra, one of President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno’s fiercest critics, for his role in inciting inter-communal violence in which 42 people were killed on May 14.

Advertisement

Most of the massacre victims were women and children in Mandakao, southwestern Chad, according to the court. On Friday, the state prosecutor had called for a 25-year sentence.

“Our client has just been the object of a humiliation,” lead defence lawyer Francis Kadjilembaye told AFP.

READ ALSO:Soldiers Foil B’Haram Attack On Lake Chad Naval Base, Kill Dozens

Advertisement

He has just been convicted based on an empty dossier, based on assumptions and in the absence of evidence,” he added.

What we had witnessed, he said, was the weaponisation of the courts.

Activists with their Transformers Party said they would put out a “special message” later Saturday.

Advertisement

Masra was arrested on May 16, two days after the violence, and charged with “inciting hatred, revolt, forming and complicity with armed gangs, complicity in murder, arson, and desecration of graves”.

He stood trial with nearly 70 other men accused of taking part in the killings.

READ ALSO:US Envoy, Minister Address Visa Policy Changes, Urge Compliance

Advertisement

– Presidential candidate –

Originally from Chad’s south, Masra comes from the Ngambaye ethnic group and enjoys wide popularity among the predominantly Christian and animist populations of the south.

Those groups feel marginalised by the largely Muslim-dominated regime in the capital, N’Djamena.

Advertisement

During the trial, Masra’s lawyers argued that no concrete evidence against him had been presented to the court.

He went on hunger strike in jail for nearly a month in June, his lawyers said at the time.

Like other opposition leaders, Masra had left Chad after a bloody crackdown on his followers in 2022, only returning under an amnesty agreed in 2024.

Advertisement

READ ALSO:Residents Count Losses As Floodwaters Take Over Lagos Communities

Trained as an economist in France and Cameroon, Masra had been a fierce opponent of the ruling authorities before they named him prime minister five months ahead of the presidential election.

He served as premier from January to May last year after signing a reconciliation deal with Deby.

Advertisement

Masra faced off against Deby in the 2024 presidential elections, winning 18.5 percent against Deby’s 61.3 percent, but claimed victory.

Of the May 14 killings, one local source said they were thought to have sprung from a dispute between ethnic Fulani nomadic herders and local Ngambaye farmers over the demarcation of grazing and farming areas.

Conflicts between pastoralists and sedentary farmers are estimated by the International Crisis Group to have caused more than 1,000 deaths and 2,000 injuries in Chad between 2021 and 2024.

Advertisement

AFP

Advertisement

Headline

Rumours Of Trump’s Ill Health Spread Online Despite Denial

Published

on

From manipulated images to out-of-context photos, false claims that Donald Trump is seriously ill — or even dead — have swirled online, with the misinformation persisting even after the US president publicly rejected it on Tuesday.

At a White House press conference, Trump dismissed social media rumours about his health as “fake news,” following the 79-year-old’s noticeable absence from public appearances and press events last week.

Advertisement

Since last Friday, there were around 104,000 mentions of the hashtag “Trump dead” on the Elon Musk-owned platform X, generating a cumulative 35.3 million views, according to an analysis from the misinformation watchdog NewsGuard.

Some social media users cited online maps purportedly showing road closures near Maryland’s Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre as evidence that Trump was being treated for a serious ailment at the facility.

READ ALSO:

Advertisement

But there were no credible reports of road closures around the medical facility.

Other social media users shared an image of an ambulance parked outside the White House, claiming it was taken last month and citing it as evidence of a health crisis involving Trump.

It was actually an old photo posted by a journalist on X in April 2023 — while Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, was still in office, according to NewsGuard.

Advertisement

Some users claiming that Trump was dead shared an out-of-context image of the White House flag flying at half-staff, a traditional gesture used to honour the death of a prominent official.

READ ALSO:Trump Considering Deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia To Uganda

In reality, Trump had issued a proclamation last week ordering flags at the White House, military posts, and naval stations across the country to be lowered in honour of the victims of a school shooting in Minneapolis.

Advertisement

Some users also posted a zoomed-in image of Trump’s face, claiming it showed a deep line above his eye that indicated a recent stroke.

But NewsGuard found that the original image was out of focus and showed no signs of a line over Trump’s eye. The image used in the false posts was digitally enhanced using an AI tool.

The misinformation — which appeared to originate from liberal anti-Trump accounts on X, Bluesky, and Instagram — persisted even after Trump stated on Truth Social over the weekend: “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE.”

Advertisement

READ ALSO:Trump Considering Deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia To Uganda

The falsehoods continued to circulate following Trump’s press conference on Tuesday, where he publicly dismissed the health rumours.

Shortly after the conference, one Bluesky account falsely claimed that the “White House just announced” the president was dead.

Advertisement

The falsehoods highlight how facts are increasingly under assault on a misinformation-filled internet landscape, an issue exacerbated by public distrust of institutions and traditional media.

READ ALSO:Why I Plotted President Trump’s Assassination – 50-yr-old Woman

The health of US presidents has always been closely watched, but with the White House seeing its two oldest ever occupants since 2017, the scrutiny is now heavier than ever.

Advertisement

Trump — the oldest man ever to be elected US president — has alleged that Democrats covered up the mental and physical decline of Biden, who was 82 when he left office in January.

Biden’s health was a key issue in the 2024 election, and the then-president was forced to drop his campaign for a second term after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.

AFP

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Headline

Russia Seeks Recognition Of Annexed Territories As Condition For Ukraine Deal

Published

on

Russia is still seeking international recognition that parts of Ukraine annexed and occupied by its forces belong to Moscow as part of any peace deal, its foreign minister said in remarks published Wednesday.

Ukraine has said it will never accept Russian control over any of its territory and has vowed to recover land seized by Moscow.

Advertisement

Russia claims to have annexed five Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as the Crimean peninsula, which it seized in 2014.

“For a durable peace, the new territorial realities that arose… must be recognised and formalised in accordance with international law,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in remarks published by Moscow on Wednesday.

READ ALSO:Russia, Ukraine Exchange Prisoners Of War, Civilians

Advertisement

Who gets control of land captured by Russia in its offensive is a key sticking point in stalled peace talks between the two sides.

Ukraine wants a ceasefire first before discussing territory, but Russia has refused to halt its offensive until a full deal is reached.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said in response that Russia was responding to peace efforts led by US President Donald Trump with “old ultimatums”.

Advertisement

Russia has not changed its aggressive goals and shows no signs of readiness for meaningful negotiations,” he said, adding: “It’s time to hit the Russian war machine with severe new sanctions and sober Moscow up.”

READ ALSO:Again, Russia Claims Another Village In Ukraine’s Region

Turkey, which has hosted three rounds of direct Russia-Ukraine talks, said last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin had offered to freeze the front lines in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions if Ukraine completely gave up the Donetsk region.

Advertisement

Russia already has almost total control over the Lugansk region and controls around 80 percent of Donetsk, AFP analysis of Institute for the Study of War (ISW) data shows.

It has also captured large swathes of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, though Ukraine still controls the regional capitals.

Ukraine’s industrial east has been decimated by more than a decade of fighting that erupted when armed Russian-backed separatists began a push to break away from Kyiv following the country’s pro-European revolution in 2014.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Headline

Syrian Ex-leader Assad Faces War Crime Charges For Killing Journalists

Published

on

French judicial authorities have issued arrest warrants for ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and six other top former officials over the bombardment of a rebel-held city in 2012 that killed two journalists, lawyers said Tuesday.

Marie Colvin, 56, an American working for The Sunday Times of Britain, and French photographer Remi Ochlik, 28, were killed on February 22, 2012, by the explosion in the eastern city of Homs, which is being investigated by the French judiciary as a potential crime against humanity as well as a war crime.

Advertisement

British photographer Paul Conroy, French reporter Edith Bouvier, and Syrian translator Wael Omar were wounded in the attack on the informal press centre where they had been working.

READ ALSO:France’s Top Court Annuls Arrest Warrant Against Syria’s Ex-president al-Assad

Assad escaped with his family to Russia after being ousted by Islamist rebels at the end of 2024, although his precise whereabouts have not been confirmed.

Advertisement

Other than Assad, the warrants notably target his brother Maher al-Assad, who was the de facto head of the 4th Syrian armoured division at the time, intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and then-army chief of staff Ali Ayoub.

The issuing of the seven arrest warrants is a decisive step that paves the way for a trial in France for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime,” said Clemence Bectarte, lawyer for the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Ochlik’s parents.

READ ALSO:US Embassy Warns Americans In Nigeria Of Looming Visa Overstay Penalties

Advertisement

The FIDH said the journalists had clandestinely entered the besieged city to “document the crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime” and were victims of a “targeted bombing”.

The investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press centre was part of the Syrian regime’s explicit intention to target foreign journalists to limit media coverage of its crimes and force them to leave the city and the country,” said Mazen Darwish, lawyer and director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM).

Colvin was known for her fearless reporting and signature black eye patch, which she wore after losing sight in one eye in an explosion during Sri Lanka’s civil war. Her career was celebrated in a Golden Globe-nominated film, “A Private War”.

Advertisement

AFP

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending