Osama bin Laden’s Yemeni driver will on Tuesday become the first Guantánamo Bay prisoner to stand before a United States military commission to face war crimes charges, in proceedings that have been denounced as unfair by human rights groups and American military lawyers.
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A French air-force fighter jet collided with an ultralight aircraft over central on France Monday, killing its two occupants, the Defence Ministry said in a statement. The Mirage 200 N was on a training flight over the city of Clermont-Ferrand when it hit the ultralight, a small, low-flying recreational plane resembling a paraglider.
A nationwide power failure on Monday left Bahrainis snarled in rush-hour traffic and without air conditioning on a day when temperatures reached the mid-fifties degrees Celsius. The United States Navy switched to generator power. A spokesperson for the electricity department blamed a ”technical fault”.
Experts say the future of the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been guaranteed for the next 300 years. Speaking two years after the completion of renovation works aimed at straightening up the 800-year-old landmark, Professor Carlo Viggiani of Naples University has told reporters ”the tower is definitely safe”.
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) denied on Monday allegations of financial irregularities made by the head of its finance and administration department. A report in the Sunday Independent newspaper claimed the commission ”suspended a whistle-blower within its own ranks”.
The Pretoria High Court has — with ”no hesitation” — set aside rightwinger Eugene Terre’Blanche’s warrant of arrest and has told the Department of Correctional Services to release him from Potchefstroom prison immediately, following his arrest on Saturday for an alleged parole violation.
The Constitutional Court will start hearing a case on Tuesday that could determine whether South Africa becomes a haven for people sentenced in absentia in other countries. It centres on a South African who fled Canada in 1996 after being convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl over a nine-month period.
Talks between the Sudanese government and two rebel groups from the western Darfur region began on Monday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, as the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw travelled to Sudan for talks with the government in Khartoum. Few details regarding the agenda of the talks were made public.
The prosecutor in the trial of a group of suspected foreign mercenaries accused of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea said on Monday he will call for the death penalty for the coup plotters’ alleged leader, South African Nick du Toit. Du Toit and 13 other suspected mercenaries from South Africa and Armenia appeared in court on Monday.