By Elizabeth Blunt
BBC News, Addis Ababa

Ethiopians will soon be getting their first chance to vote since the general election in 2005, which ended with violent protests and the jailing of most of the leaders of the opposition.

The opposition CUD party won far more seats than any opposition party had ever won before, but they were convinced that the true result should have been even more in their favour.

The CUD leaders were eventually pardoned and released from jail last year, and the government announced that their rights were being fully restored and they were free to vote and stand for office.

But their seats were declared vacant while they were in prison.

There will be by-elections for their old seats in April, and also elections for Addis Ababa city council, which the opposition won, but which has had an appointed caretaker administration since 2005.

But it now appears that none of the imprisoned party leadership will be standing for election again, or trying to get their old seats back.

Conspiracy claim

The leader of the CUD parliamentary party, Temesgen Zewde, said they had told the Ethiopia National Electoral Board that they were ready and willing to take part in the April elections.

But, he said, the board had chosen to award their party name to a CUD breakaway group, and their party symbol – the “V” for Victory sign – to another party altogether.

“Even if they wanted to stand,” he said, “there is now no party name they can associate with, nor any election symbol”.

The CUD allege a conspiracy by the ruling party and the government, but their own party has been riven with internal feuds, making it possible for a CUD dissident, Ayele Chamiso, to make a successful bid for the party name.

Many of the most prominent members of the old CUD went abroad as soon as they were released rather than staying in Ethiopia and cultivating their constituencies.

The chairman, Hailu Shawal, and the man who was chosen as mayor of Addis Ababa in 2005, Berhanu Nega, are both still in the United States.

Even without the party name, some of the CUD leaders could have stood as independent candidates, but they have chosen not to do so.

‘Disorientated’

Political analyst Desalegn Rahmato points out that although the government said publicly that those released from prison had had their full civic rights restored, there may have been conditions in the agreement which secured their release which were never made public.

Also, he said, the former prisoners, as individuals, “might be feeling a bit disorientated after two years in jail”.

“Perhaps they feel they no longer have the momentum and excitement that they felt in the 2005 elections. That momentum is lost now,” he said.

Without that excitement, voter registration and turnout may well be lower than in 2005.

The ruling party, the EPRDF, will be bidding to recover its dominance of the political scene in areas where it did badly last time, like Addis Ababa.

It is not clear whether any of the remaining

(AFP)

An Islamist-held town in Somalia came under attack Monday from what local elders identified as a US Air Force AC-130 gunship, leaving at least four civilians dead.

Elder Abdullahi Sheikh Duale said the raid occurred in the early hours of Monday morning, and appeared to have focused on three particular targets in the Dhoble town.

“Four civilians were killed,” said Duale.

There was no immediate US confirmation of the operation.

Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, a spokesman for the Islamist movement which is leading an insurgency against the Somali government, confirmed the attack.

“The Americans bombed the town and hit civilians targets thinking that they were Islamist hideouts. They used an AC-130 plane,” Robow told AFP.

The AC-130 is a fearsome gunship bristling with side-mounted cannons that can saturate an area with devastating fire or strike targets with surgical precision.

The modified C-130 aircraft are used by air force special operations forces for close air support missions, strikes on select targets and to protect US forces in the field.

Carrying a crew of 13, it flies low and operates at night for concealment and surprise.

If confirmed, this would be at least the third time the US military has conducted operations inside Somalia since the start of 2007.

In June last year, a US Navy destroyer shelled suspected Al-Qaeda targets in mountainous and remote areas in northeastern Somalia where Islamist militants were believed to have bases.

Earlier the same year a US gunship bombed insurgent positions in southern Somalia, coming to the aid of the Somali government forces which had ousted the Islamists from most of the country’s southern and central regions.

US officials said the previous attacks were aimed at “high-value” Al-Qaeda militants — among them Comoran Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, blamed for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain, which oversees the Djibouti military base, referred calls to the US Department of Defense in Washington.

Since the Islamists were ousted from power in early 2007, they have been carrying out attacks against government officials, Ethiopian forces — who are backing the Somali government — and African Union peacekeepers.

Somalia has never really recovered since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre plunged the Horn of Africa nation into widespread clan fighting.

By Sahra Abdi Ahmed

KISMAYU, Somalia, March 3 (Reuters) – Two U.S. missiles hit a house in southern Somalia on Monday, according to local officials, in an attack Washington said was directed at “known terrorists”.

It was the fourth U.S. strike in 14 months on Somalia, where Washington believes local Islamist insurgents are giving shelter to wanted al Qaeda figures.

“We launched a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists,” a senior U.S. official, who declined to be named, told Reuters in Washington.

Residents of Dobley, a remote Somali town 220 km (140 miles) from the southern port city of Kismayu on the Kenyan border, said they believed the missiles were targeting senior Islamist leaders meeting nearby.

Dobley district commissioner Ali Hussein Nur said six people were killed. A local politician, who had visited the scene and who asked not to be named, said only three were wounded.

The U.S. official said it was too early to know what damage had been inflicted, or whether there were any casualties. The official declined to give details on the type of weapon used.

The Somali politician said Sheikh Hassan Turki, a local militant cleric, and other leaders of a militant Islamist group from Mogadishu were meeting. The Islamists have been waging an insurgency against Somali government forces.

ASSESSING DAMAGE

“The town is very tense. People have started fleeing because they fear there might be more attacks,” he said.

A man in Kismayu, who said the house that was hit belonged to him, told Reuters in Kismayu his daughter was among the wounded and four of his cows had also been killed in the attack.

“We do not know whether the missiles were fired by the American AC-130 plane which is still flying over the city. All we know is they dropped from the sky,” Mohamed Nurie Salad said.

He said he was returning to Dobley to assess the damage, which he had been told about over the telephone.

On Jan. 8, 2007, a U.S. AC-130 gunship struck Islamists in southern Somalia in Washington’s first overt military action there since pulling out of a U.N.-backed peacekeeping mission in 1994 after the “Black Hawk Down” incident.

That attack, and another with the same kind of airplane shortly thereafter, struck Islamists fleeing from Ethiopian and Somali troops who cornered them in southern Somalia during a two-week war to rout the militant movement.

On June 21, a U.S. Navy ship fired missiles at Islamist fighters and foreign jihadists hiding in the mountains in the northern Puntland region.

The United States accuses Somali Islamist insurgents of harbouring al Qaeda fugitives responsible for planning and executing the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In Mogadishu, several civilians were killed by soldiers patrolling the Somali capital’s main market on Monday.

“Four men were killed by stray bullets,” Ali Mohamed, head of the Bakara market traders’ committee, told Reuters. Witness Abdi Nur said he only saw two civilians dead.

In the southern town of Bur Hakaba, at least five people including the local police chief died in clashes between suspected Islamists and government forces, a resident said.

The Horn of Africa country has had no central government since a dictator was overthrown in 1991. An interim government formed in 2004 is struggling to assert its authority and is battling the Islamists in Mogadishu. (Additional reporting by Aweys Yusuf, Abdi Sheikh and Mohamed Abdi in Mogadishu, Writing Guled Mohamed in Nairobi; Editing by Giles Elgood and Elizabeth Piper)

(For in depth Reuters coverage of Africa please see: africa.reuters.com/ )

(Times Online) – A British teacher faces jail in Ethiopia after being convicted of defamation for her role in exposing paedophiles working in a children’s charity.

Jill Campbell and her husband Gary compiled a dossier of evidence that helped to convict a British sex offender who admitted having a sexual relationship with a child in his care. A second suspect committed suicide.

The Swiss charity Terre Des Hommes-Lausanne (TdH) admitted that abuse had taken place at its care facilities in the village of Jari, but denied the Campbells’ accusations that senior staff had covered up the scandal and had failed to inform the Ethiopian authorities. The charity successfully brought a defamation case against the couple.

Mrs Campbell, 45, will find out on Friday whether she will go to prison after a failed appeal. Her lawyers have told her that she will be found in contempt of court if she refuses to apologise and could be jailed for six months.

Yesterday friends said that she was distraught at having to tell her two adopted 10-year-old children that she might have to go to prison. Her husband has apologised to TdH so that one parent will be able to remain at home. In a statement published by the Ethiopian media last week, he apologised to the charity for alleging that it “knowingly removed their country director, David Christie (also known as David Allan) from Ethiopia in order to cover up a crime”.

The couple have lived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, for 14 years and are well known for their charity work. Friends have rallied to defend the Campbells and insist that without them paedeophile activity would not have been exposed. “Instead of TdH apologising to the victims, they are forcing Gary and Jill to apologise for blowing the whistle and stopping the chain of homosexual abusers victimising orphans in the care of this Swiss-based NGO,” said one.

Clare Rees, a teacher who works with Mrs Campbell at Sandford English Community School, said: “She’s seen as a saint. If you walk along the streets here you meet so many people she has helped. That’s why this whole thing is so unfair.”

Mrs Campbell became aware of the allegations of sexual abuse through a colleague at the school whose boyfriend worked at Jari. In December 1996 staff members saw a boy escaping from Christie’s bedroom window.

He was dismissed by the charity and left Ethiopia. He was subsequently arrested in 2001 as he travelled to Zambia. The Campbells had drawn up a dossier of evidence against him, which they circulated widely.

Christie, originally from Bournemouth, was eventually found guilty of abusing boys under 15 and of procuring children for his friends. In 2003 he was sentenced at a court in Addis Ababa to nine years in prison with hard labour.

One of his associates and a frequent visitor to Jari, Mark Lachance, committed suicide after posting a confession on the internet in 1999.

Colin Tucker, a spokesman for TdH, declined to discuss the charity’s motive in suing the whistle-blowers. “Read the judgment. That’s the best we can say,” he said. “They defamed us and we have successfully prosecuted them.”

Google is looking for the next generation of gadget developers in East Africa! Interested students should register for the competition and submit their ideas for what they think will make a great gadget. Each proposal should explain what the gadget does, who would use it, and why it will be successful, as well as adding some details about how the gadget will work. In March, we’ll review the registered gadget ideas and give feedback to the developer so that they can continue creating a fully functioning version of their gadget in time for the contest deadline in July. The overall winner plus some runners up will win prizes. If you have some technical skills, and are enrolled in a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD course in 2008 in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, or Burundi, we would love to hear your gadget ideas. Find more information about the competition as well as the submission form on our competition page… Continue reading >>