French prosecutors on Thursday requested a seven-year jail sentence and a €300,000 fine for French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy for allegedly taking millions of euros from the late Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi to help his 2007 election campaign.
The detention of South Sudan’s first vice-president, Riek Machar, had effectively collapsed the peace deal that ended the 2013-2018 civil war, said his party on Thursday.
The Sudanese army shelled parts of Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman from early morning on Thursday, said residents, after declaring victory over their Rapid Support Forces rivals in a two-year battle for the capital.
French prosecutors seek seven years’ jail time for ex-president Sarkozy
French prosecutors on Thursday requested a seven-year jail sentence and a €300,000 fine for French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy for allegedly taking millions of euros from the late Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi to help his 2007 election campaign.
Sarkozy has been on trial since January on charges of “concealing the embezzlement of public funds, passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy with a view to committing a crime”.
Financial prosecutor Sebastien de La Touanne described the accusations against Sarkozy and the 12 other defendants as “high-intensity corruption”, telling the court: “A very dark picture of a part of our republic has emerged.”
De La Touanne said Sarkozy had concluded “a Faustian corruption pact with one of the most unsavoury dictators of the past 30 years”.
Prosecutors also requested a five-year ban on running for office and exercising certain privileges.
Outside the courtroom, Sarkozy’s lawyers told reporters the sentences requested were harsh and unfounded.
“He is innocent,” said lawyer Christophe Ingrain.
Sarkozy posted on Facebook that the case was politically motivated, adding: “I will continue to fight inch by inch for the truth, and to believe in the wisdom of the court.”
Prosecutors requested between one and six years in jail and fines totalling up to €150,000 for Sarkozy’s former right-hand man Claude Gueant, ex-interior minister Brice Hortefeux and Sarkozy’s ex-head of campaign financing, Eric Woerth.
The centre-right former president has been embroiled in legal battles since leaving office in 2012.
Last year, France’s highest court upheld his conviction for corruption and influence peddling, ordering him to wear an electronic tag for a year, a first for a former French head of state.
Also last year, an appeals court confirmed a separate conviction for illegal campaign financing over his failed re-election bid in 2012. France’s highest court is expected to rule on a further appeal some time this year.
Detention of South Sudan’s Machar cancels peace deal, says his party
The detention of South Sudan’s first vice-president, Riek Machar, had effectively collapsed the peace deal that ended the 2013-2018 civil war, said his party on Thursday.
The UN Peacekeeping Mission in South Sudan (Unmiss) called for restraint, saying the country stood on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict.
“This will not only devastate South Sudan but also affect the entire region,” said Unmiss.
The civil war — fought between forces loyal to Machar and his rival, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, often along ethnic lines — left hundreds of thousands of people dead. It ended in a deal that brought both men together in a fractious national unity government.
Machar’s SPLM-IO party said South Sudan’s defence minister and its chief of national security “forcefully entered” Machar’s residence in the capital, Juba, on Wednesday evening to deliver an arrest warrant.
Machar was being held with his wife at his home, accused of supporting the White Army militia which clashed with the military in Nasir, Upper Nile State, this month, said Reath Muoch Tang, a senior SPLM-IO official.
Machar’s party denies ongoing links with the White Army, which it fought alongside during the civil war.
SPLM-IO deputy chair Oyet Nathaniel Pierino said Machar’s detention meant the agreement had been “abrogated”.
It “effectively brings the agreement to a collapse, thus the prospect for peace and stability in South Sudan has now been put into serious jeopardy”, he said.
William Ruto, president of neighbouring Kenya, said on X he had held a phone call with Kiir on Machar’s arrest and detention and was sending a special envoy to Juba to try to defuse the situation.
The army was heavily deployed near Machar’s house on Thursday, said a Reuters journalist. On Wednesday, the UN reported fighting between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar close to Juba.
The United States Bureau of African Affairs urged Kiir to release Machar and called on South Sudan’s leaders to “demonstrate sincerity of stated commitments to peace”.
South Sudan’s coalition government has been slow to enact key provisions of the peace agreement, which include national elections and the unification of their two forces in one army.
Sudan’s army shells Omdurman in push to oust RSF from region
The Sudanese army shelled parts of Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman from early morning on Thursday, said residents, after declaring victory over their Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rivals in a two-year battle for the capital.
The army ousted the RSF from its last footholds in Khartoum on Wednesday, but the paramilitary RSF holds some areas in Omdurman, directly across the Nile River, and has consolidated in west Sudan, splitting the nation into rival zones.
Khartoum residents expressed delight that the fighting was over for the first time since it erupted in April 2023.
“During the last two years, the RSF made our life hell, killing and stealing. They didn’t respect anybody, including women and old men,” said teacher Ahmed Hassan (49).
The war has ruined much of Khartoum, uprooted more than 12 million Sudanese from their homes, and left about half of the 50 million population suffering acute hunger in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
Overall deaths are hard to estimate, but a study published last year said the toll may have reached 61,000 in Khartoum state alone in the first 14 months of the conflict.
In a video posted on Thursday from the recaptured presidential palace, army chief Abdul Fattah al-Burhan declared: “Khartoum is free.”
The RSF said in a statement that it had never lost a battle, but that its forces had “strategically repositioned and expanded across the battlefronts to secure their military objectives”, without naming Khartoum or other locations.
While the seizure of Khartoum marks a significant turning point, the war looks far from over.
Residents in the western state of Darfur said the RSF was shelling army positions in al-Fashir, the main city there, on Thursday.
RSF fighters pulling out of Khartoum on Wednesday via a Nile dam 40km south redeployed, some heading into Omdurman to help stave off army attacks and others heading west towards Darfur, said witnesses.
The army controls most of Omdurman, home to two big military bases, and looks focused on driving out the last RSF troops to secure control over Khartoum’s entire urban area. Thursday’s shelling was directed at southern Omdurman.
The RSF still holds a last patch of territory around the dam at Jebel Aulia south of Khartoum, said two residents of the area, to secure a line of retreat for stragglers.
US embassy in Chad curbs issuance of most nonimmigrant visas
The US embassy in Chad has suspended the issuance of most nonimmigrant visas for 90 days, said the State Department on Thursday, in the first known international travel restrictions of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Chad is one of more than 40 countries the Trump administration has been considering for inclusion on a list of nations whose citizens would be subject to travel curbs similar to travel bans imposed during Trump’s first term in 2017-21.
However, it was not immediately clear if the suspension at the embassy was related to that review. The Trump administration has not formally announced any travel restrictions since taking office on 20 January.
A State Department spokesperson said in an email that the suspension applied to nonimmigrant tourists, business travellers and student and exchange visitors.
The spokesperson did not immediately respond to follow-up questions about the reason for the suspension or whether it was related to plans for a wider travel ban.
Chad’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the embassy had informed it of the measures and that it was looking into the reasons behind them.
It added that Chadians could apply for visas at US embassies in other countries, and the embassy in Chad would still issue visas to diplomats and people with US residency.
Record 28 million people face acute hunger in DRC
Twenty-eight million people face acute hunger in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a record for the country, driven by an escalating conflict between the government and Rwandan-backed rebels in the east, said the UN on Thursday.
A longstanding humanitarian crisis in DRC has been aggravated by the conflict, with 2.5 million more people becoming acutely hungry since the most recent surge of violence in December, said the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in a joint statement.
Those facing acute hunger are classified as Phase 3 or higher in the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). Of the 28 million in DRC, 3.9 million are Phase 4, meaning they are experiencing emergency levels of hunger.
Phase 5 indicates famine. The country has a population of more than 100 million.
Fighting between the government and Rwandan-backed M23 rebels has escalated since the start of the year into eastern DRC’s biggest conflict in decades and has driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.
“The current situation is dire for the population, as harvests are lost, food prices soar, millions of people face acute food insecurity and are increasingly vulnerable,” said Athman Mravili, the interim FAO representative in DRC.
More than 10 million of those facing acute hunger are in eastern DRC, which has experienced near-constant insecurity since wars in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide left millions dead and spawned dozens of militia groups.
Cuts by the US and other leading donors to their foreign aid have left humanitarian agencies struggling to respond to the impacts of conflict, natural disasters and climate change.
Algeria jails writer Sansal for five years
An Algerian court sentenced French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal to five years in jail on Thursday for undermining national unity, prompting a call for his freedom from French President Emmanuel Macron.
Sansal (80) has been detained in Algeria since November, spending time in hospital for ill health, and French authorities as well as fellow writers have called for his release.
Sansal has long been a critic of Algerian authorities, but he has regularly visited the country, and his books have been sold there without restrictions.
The court sentenced Sansal to five years in prison and a fine of about $3,700, reported the private broadcaster Ennahar TV.
A diplomatic source confirmed the sentence.
The court charged him with “undermining national unity and publishing publications that threaten national security and stability”.
Sansal, who was in court, denied the charges and said he did not intend to offend Algeria or state institutions.
“I hope there can be humanitarian decisions by the highest Algerian authorities to give him back his freedom and allow him to be treated for the disease he is fighting,” Macron told a press conference on Thursday.
French media have reported he has cancer. DM