Egypt wants the United Nations Security Council to step in to postpone the extradition of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court in The Hague by a year. The Court wants to prosecute Sudan’s president for genocide and war crimes in the Sudanese region of Darfur.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak discussed the Darfur crisis with his Sudanese counterpart in Khartoum on Monday. He also spoke with former rebels in southern Sudan.
Egypt and Sudan agree that prosecuting President Bashir will adversely affect a peace deal for Darfur and stability in the region.
In her homeland, Belainesh Gebre sometimes runs at altitudes as high as 7,000 feet above sea level.
At Sunday’s sixth annual Big Sur Half Marathon on Monterey Bay , the 20-year-old Ethiopian found herself running along the shoreline, and the results showed.
After breaking from a pack at around the 9-mile mark, Gebre, who now lives in Arizona, went on to win the women’s Big Sur Half Marathon title, clocking a time of 1:13:11 over the 13.1-mile course.
“It feels great to win here,” said Gebre, who after crossing the finish line looked as if she could’ve kept on running to Salinas. “I’ve been training and feel that I’m in good shape. Being at sea level, it made things a little easier.”
Like Kenyan men’s winner Wesley Ochoro, Gebre had been hoping to break the course record (1:12:18, set by Jennifer Rhines in 2006). Instead of problems with her shoes and blisters, however, Gebre was slowed down by gusty winds that at times reached up to 20 mph.
“The more we got towards Pacific Grove, the windier it got,” said Gebre, who earlier this year won the 20K Dam to Dam race in Iowa with a time of 1:12:33. “The wind slowed me down.”
While Gebre distanced herself from the field coming down the final miles, so too did 23-year-old Kenyan Hyvon Ngetich.
Ngetich, who ran a personal best half marathon time of 1:11:53 in Boca del Rio, Mexico earlier this year and like Ochoro won the OC Half Marathon, stayed with Gebre until the last mile, placing second with a time of 1:13:47. Coming in third with a time of 1:16:08 was fellow Kenyan Jacquline Nyetipie.
“It got pretty windy out there at times,” said Ngetich, who like Gebre was making her Big Sur Half Marathon debut. “She (Gebre) just went ahead of me towards the finish line.”
On the local front, Monterey’s Alexis Smith, 33, placed ninth with a time of 1:23:40.
Others placing in the top 25 included Seaside resident Sheri Abramonte (1:30:12) and Salinas’ Teresa Scattini (1:31:59).
Smith captured the women’s 30-34 division crown. Also taking home a division title was 67-year-old Carmel resident Hansi Rigney, who won the women’s 65-69 group at 1:47:47.
In the women’s 16-19 division, Carmel’s Quinn Harris placed fourth at 1:40:07, while in the women’s 45-49 division Pacific Grove’s Stella Smith also took fourth at 1:35:07.
Other top local female finishes included Lynn Moncher of Seaside (1:45:14) placing third in the 55-59 division, Salinas resident Katherine Mattson (2:08:39) placing fifth in the 60-64 division and 71-year-old P.G. resident Beverley Schmidt (3:00:21) placing fifth in the 70-74 division.
Top women overall 1 Belainesh Gebre, 1:13:11 2 Hyvon Negtich, 1:13:47 3 Jacquline Nyetipei, 1:16:08 4 Lauren Johnson, 1:16:47 5 Kari Bertrand, 1:18:08
GARISSA, Kenya (Reuters) – Heavily armed Somali gunmen kidnapped two European nuns on Monday during a pre-dawn raid on a remote Kenyan border town, witnesses said.
Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for aid workers, who are often abducted or killed in attacks usually blamed on Islamist insurgents or clan militia.
One local aid worker in the small town of El Wak said the attackers hurled a grenade and then fired a rocket at a Kenyan police post at about 1 a.m. (2200 GMT Sunday).
“They started spraying bullets … then they abducted the Dutch woman and Italian woman from the local church,” he said.
The Kenyan Red Cross Society said in a statement that the gunmen had escaped in three hijacked vehicles, and that it was feared they had taken their captives back across the border.
There was no immediate comment from Kenyan authorities.
Sheikh Hassan Hussein, chairman of Somalia’s neighbouring Gedo Region, said he did not know where they had gone.
“We don’t know who exactly they were, but we can call them Somali bandits,” Hussein told Reuters by telephone.
In the most recent attack on humanitarian workers in lawless Somalia, men armed with pistols in Jamame, north of rebel-held Kismayu port, assassinated a Somali man on Sunday who ran the local office of the U.S.-based Mercy Corps charity.
Gunmen also stormed an airstrip last week in central Somalia, kidnapping four European aid workers and two Kenyan pilots. Locals said the hostages were taken to Mogadishu.
Suspicion for such attacks normally falls on Islamist militants or clan militia, but rebel leaders have said government hardliners are behind the killings to discredit them and stir the international community to intervene. (Additional reporting by Somalia team; Writing by Daniel Wallis)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is what Ethiopian opposition leaders have failed to do. The crimes committed following the 2005 elections in Ethiopia is far worse than what happened in Kenya.
By Derek Kilner | VOA
A Kenyan human-rights watchdog says it has been in communication with the International Criminal Court in the Hague about crimes committed in the aftermath Kenya’s December elections. As Derek Kilner reports from Nairobi, Kenyan political leaders are divided over whether to support a recommendation to establish a tribunal on post-election violence in the country.
As part of an agreement mediated by African leaders in February, a commission was established to investigate violence set off by disputed election results that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands from December through February.
Last month the commission, headed by Kenyan judge Philip Waki, released its findings and recommended Kenya establish a tribunal with Kenyan and international members, to try those suspected of the greatest involvement in the violence.
Waki refused to reveal the names of the suspects, but said if Kenya’s leaders did not agree to the tribunal within 60 days, those names will be forwarded to the International Criminal Court.
Leaders from both of Kenya’s main political parties have not offered a firm position on the report, trying to avoid being seen as blocking an investigation into serious crimes, while retaining support of allies who may be implicated.
Kenyan civil society leaders have grown increasingly frustrated with the political response. A top official with the state-funded Kenya National Commission for Human Rights, Hassan Omar, called for leaders to act on the report.
“By rejecting the report, we understand the politicians to be telling Kenyans that ‘A’, they do not want national catharsis, healing of the nation, or a clean break from the past; ‘B’, they support the love of national morality in politics, and does not believe in the culture of humanity; and ‘C’ that they prefer to reinforce Kenya’s culture of impunity by hiding the concealed painful truth of the post-election violence,” he said.
Omar said the human-rights commission, which produced a separate report on the violence, would prefer to establish a tribunal in Kenya, but has been in contact with the International Criminal Court.
“The ICC has already been in touch with the KNCHR. They are interested in this matter. They have asked us to share with them our report, plus other reports, and to share with them the relevant information,” he said. “They are determining whether this matter is a matter that they would be interested in, and the ICC does not need an invitation to come here.”
Key supporters of both President Mwai Kibaki and his main opponent in December’s election, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, are thought to be among those under investigation.
Supporters of Mr. Odinga from the Rift Valley province have been accused of organizing tribal militias to target members of President Kibaki’s Kikuyu ethnic group over long-standing land disputes. Supporters of the president, meanwhile, have been accused of recruiting a Kikuyu gang known as the Mungiki to carry out retaliatory attacks.
Tensions have been particularly visible within Mr. Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, which holds a majority in Kenya’s parliament. The prime minister, who has eagerly courted the favor of the international community during the past year, initially endorsed Waki’s recommendations. But a recent meeting of the party’s members of parliament rejected them.
On Monday, after a meeting of top party leaders, Secretary-General Anyang Nyong’o said the party would form a new committee to look at the report.
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA – Meles Zenawi’s troops in Mogadishu have indiscriminately opened gunfire on unarmed civilians killing three people on Tuesday, witnesses told Mareeg.
Eyewitnesses confirmed to Shabelle that they saw the dead bodies killed by the soldiers in Hamar Bile area of Wardhigley district in Mogadishu.
It’s yet unknown the motives behind the killing of the civilians by the Woyanne regime troops.
LAGOS (AFP) — Africa may have hailed his victory, but Barack Obama’s election as the first black president of the United States has triggered awkward questions about the continent’s own democratic track record.
As the euphoria fades, opposition parties across the continent contrasted Obama’s victory with the shortcomings of their own democracy as a reason for despondency.
“When the declaration was made, I broke down and I wept; one — for joy that ‘my eyes have seen the coming of the Lord’; number two — I wept in sorrow for my country,” said former Nigerian foreign minister Bolaji Akinyemi, now a member of the National Electoral Reform Committee.
Akinyemi’s organisation faces an uphill struggle to iron out the democratic wrinkles of Africa’s most populous country, where President Umaru Yar’adua’s April 2007 poll victory is still subject to approval by the Supreme Court, which recently indefinitely postponed a ruling.
Those elections were described as neither democratic nor credible by the European Union, while the White House said it was “deeply troubled” by the violence which accompanied them.
Similar concern surrounded recent elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, which were marked by widespread violence and intimidation.
And on Monday, the main political parties in the Ivory Coast agreed to postpone November 30 elections until next year because of insecurity and problems with voter registration.
In Harare, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who believes he was robbed of an outright victory in Zimbabwe’s March elections, said Obama’s victory has a particular resonance with its lesson of “political maturity and tolerance”.
“Zimbabweans appreciate the true value of a vote, the preciousness of a poll that is conducted openly and fairly, and a result that is respected by all,” said Tsvangirai who pulled out of a runoff against Robert Mugabe after scores of his supporters were killed.
While Obama can stay no longer than eight years in the White House, more than half a dozen African leaders have already chalked up more than a quarter of a century in power.
Mugabe has been in charge since 1980, Angola’s Jose Eduardo dos Santos since 1979 while Hosni Mubarak has ruled Egypt for 27 years and routinely been re-elected unopposed with vote totals of more than 95 percent.
Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema seized power in a 1979 coup, three years before Paul Biya became president in neighboring Cameroon.
Moamer Kadhafi has been in power for nearly 39 years in Libya but he falls just short of qualifying as Africa’s longest-serving ruler, a distinction belonging to Gabon’s Omar Bongo, who came to power in 1967. He won the country’s most recent presidential election with 79 percent of the vote.
Obama’s victory was greeted with particular jubilation in Kenya, with President Mwai Kibake hailing it as “an inspiration to millions”.
But some commentators drew an unflattering comparison with his disputed re-election last December. Kibaki was ultimately forced to share power with the now Prime Minister Raila Odinga following post-election violence that killed more than 1,000 people.
The Daily Nation newspaper said there was much in Obama’s victory “that can profit us in Kenya — that true democracy requires tolerance and the ability to give in with grace when we lose a political contest.”
South Africa, and its peaceful elections in 1994, 1999 and 2004, stands as an example to the continent, one that Nigeria, and its 140 million people, hopes to emulate.
“There has been so much enthusiasm also about the efficiency of American democracy, even from political parties, and state governors who are sponsors of violence and electoral fraud in Nigeria, said the daily Guardian in Lagos.
“If we love success and democracy so much, why don’t we create an enabling environment for the same value in Africa?”
