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Campaign for jailed Senegal election candidate Faye takes to the road

Campaign for jailed Senegal election candidate Faye takes to the road

BACKERS of detained opposition presidential candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye are taking his campaign to the streets of Senegal with posters and bracelets, drumming up support in the hope he will be released before the vote. Faye was relatively unknown within Senegal's tumultuous political scene until popular firebrand opposition leader Ousmane Sonko backed his candidacy for the March 24 vote. Sonko, who enjoys widespread support among Senegal's jobless youths, is also in detention and disqualified from the race over a defamation conviction. Sonko denies any wrongdoing. Faye, who is facing charges including defamation and contempt of court, remains eligible because there has been…
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Brazil’s Dani Alves gets 4-1/2 years for rape in Spain, will appeal

Brazil’s Dani Alves gets 4-1/2 years for rape in Spain, will appeal

BRAZILIAN footballer Dani Alves was convicted of raping a woman in the restroom of a Barcelona nightclub in 2022 and sentenced to 4-1/2 years in prison, which he will appeal. The top court in Spain's Catalonia region also ordered Alves, who has been jailed on remand for over a year and repeatedly changed his story, to pay 150,000 euros ($163,000) to the victim. "The sentence considers it has been proven that the victim did not consent and that there is evidence, in addition to the testimony of the plaintiff, to consider the rape proven," the court said in a statement.…
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Who is Bushra Bibi, Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan’s wife jailed for corruption?

Who is Bushra Bibi, Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan’s wife jailed for corruption?

BUSHRA Khan, the wife of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was sentenced to 14 years in jail, is known for her spirituality. Khan, 71, has often called Bushra his spiritual leader and she is known for her devotion to Sufism, a mystical form of Islam. Born Bushra Riaz Watto, she changed her name to Khan after her marriage. Her husband and followers commonly refer to her as Bushra Bibi or Bushra Begum, titles that in Urdu denote respect. She has kept a low profile since her marriage to Khan, a former cricket hero who has been in the public eye for…
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Mauritania’s former president jailed for five years for corruption

Mauritania’s former president jailed for five years for corruption

MAURITANIA'S former president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, has been sentenced to five years in prison for money laundering and "illicit enrichment". Abdel Aziz led the West African country for a decade after coming to power in a 2008 coup and was an ally of Western powers fighting Islamist militants in the Sahel region. He had been on trial since January and denied corruption allegations. The court found Abdel Aziz guilty of two of 10 charges late on Monday, following an inquiry into allegations of embezzlement of public property and corruption. One of his lawyers called the ruling "a political verdict…
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Kenya doomsday cult leader jailed for unlicensed film production

Kenya doomsday cult leader jailed for unlicensed film production

THE leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult, in which authorities believe more than 400 members may have died, was jailed for 12 months for producing and distributing films without a licence. Authorities accuse Paul Mackenzie, head of the Good News International Church, of ordering his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the end of the world. Police have exhumed hundreds of bodies from mass graves in Shakahola forest in the country's southeast. Mackenzie handed himself into police in April and has repeatedly been denied bail while investigations continue into the…
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Jailed Senegal opposition leader suffers court setbacks

Jailed Senegal opposition leader suffers court setbacks

THE presidential ambitions of jailed Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko suffered two setbacks after the Supreme Court annulled a lower court's decision ordering his reinstatement in the voter roll. Separately, a West African regional court backed the government of Senegal in a legal battle with Sonko, who had filed a case claiming the state violated his human rights. Sonko, 49, has faced a flurry of court cases over the past two years for charges including libel and rape, which he denies. He was arrested in July for insurrection, the government dissolved his party, and he has been struck off the…
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Venezuelan diplomat jailed in Kenya for 20 years for envoy’s murder

Venezuelan diplomat jailed in Kenya for 20 years for envoy’s murder

A Kenyan court sentenced a former top Venezuelan diplomat to 20 years in jail over the 2012 murder of the Latin American nation's acting ambassador at her home in an upmarket Nairobi neighbourhood. Dwight Sagaray, who was the first secretary at the embassy, was convicted, along with three Kenyan nationals, in January this year of killing Olga Fonseca. Judge Roselyn Korir sentenced all four men to 20 years in jail. The term starts from January. Sagaray could be tried for the murder because he was stripped of diplomatic immunity following the crime, the court ruled in January. Fonseca was found…
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Jailed, deported and blacklisted: Qatar’s outspoken World Cup guards

Jailed, deported and blacklisted: Qatar’s outspoken World Cup guards

ANDREW Maganga seized the chance to work as a World Cup security guard in Qatar last year, only to be fired along with some 200 others on the last day of the tournament, jailed for protesting over wages, and deported back to his native Kenya. At home in Mombasa, he has little to show for four years working various jobs in gas-wealthy Qatar, having spent his savings paying recruitment agents and supporting his family. Maganga's deportation order, seen by Reuters, cited a charge of "labour strike" and banned him from Qatar, which like other Gulf states forbids workers from organising…
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Putin critic jailed in treason case for 25 years

Putin critic jailed in treason case for 25 years

ANDREW OSBORN KREMLIN critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for 25 years by a Moscow court, the harshest sentence of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine, after being convicted of treason and other offences in a trial he said was politically motivated. Kara-Murza, 41, a father of three and an opposition politician who holds Russian and British passports, spoke out against President Vladimir Putin for years and successfully lobbied Western governments to impose sanctions on Russia and individual Russians for purported human rights violations. State prosecutors, who had requested a 25-year term, had accused him of treason, among other offences, and of discrediting…
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Kenya: Police officers jailed for lawyer’s murder

Kenya: Police officers jailed for lawyer’s murder

HUMPHREY MALALO A Kenyan court sentenced three police officers and their civilian informant to decades in prison for the 2016 murder of human rights lawyer Willie Kimani and two others. The case triggered outrage in Kenya, where police face frequent allegations of brutality and extrajudicial killings but are almost never charged. Kimani, his client Josephat Mwendwa and their driver, Joseph Muiruri, were killed shortly after filing a complaint of police brutality, alleging that Mwendwa had been shot and wounded by police. Their bodies were later recovered from a river outside the capital Nairobi. The four defendants were convicted of murder last year.…
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