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/ 19 January 2007
Pressure from the international community, NGOs and civil society led to the acquittal recently of five alleged coup plotters imprisoned in Burundi in August this year. The men were arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow the government, but the accusations were widely believed to have been fabricated by elements in the government.
Unthinkable only four years ago under the fundamentalist Islamic rule of the ousted Taliban regime that banned music and television, <i>Afghan Star</i> — a spin-off of the West’s <i>Pop Idols</i> — has taken Afghanistan television viewers by storm, writes Emmanuel Duparcq.
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/ 12 December 2005
An enormous cheer rises into the Bagram sky. In a pink bikini top, miniskirt and red Father Christmas hat, the voluptuous Lilian Garcia has appeared to give thousands of GIs an early Christmas present: the superstars of American wrestling here, in the Afghan desert. Close to 5 000 soldiers are packed around a wrestling ring rigged up on the tarmac of the biggest United States base.