Gabon: Thousands march against ritual killings

LIBREVILLE, Gabon (AP) — Thousands of Gabonese people marched to protest ritual killings, in which people are murdered so their body parts can be used in amulets to bring good luck. Sylvia Bongo Ondimba, Gabon's first lady, led the event Saturday along with Christian and Muslim religious leaders.

The president of the Association for the Fight against Ritual Crimes, Elvis Ebang Ondo, estimates that Gabon has 20 mutilation killings a year. He said there are more such killings in election years, as some people seek amulets to win government positions.

The marchers presented a declaration to President Ali Bongo Ondimba, urging him to fight the crime.  

Police dispersed a separate march by a group opposed to the participation of the first lady.

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Nigeria attack recalls other killings by soldiers

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Residents in Nigeria's northeast accused the military of burning down civilian homes in a recent fight with Islamic extremists that left at least 187 people dead, the latest in a series of incidents which authorities have been blamed for the killing of bystanders.

In separate incidents in 1999 and 2001, soldiers in Nigeria shelled villages, opened fire on residents and tortured civilians. While the military has denied abuse allegations surrounding the recent killings in Baga, the West African nation has a history of security forces indiscriminately killing civilians since it became an uneasy democracy after years of military rule.

And as officials hope to woo extremists into possible peace talks, the deaths of civilians and harassment by soldiers could likely betray its efforts. The government often claims its force is used only to combat the extremists, or criminals.

"You and I know nowadays the 'Boko Haram syndrome:' Anybody put in the public space as allegedly being killed in the course of fire as suspected Boko Haram persons, most members of the public will not fear it much," said Kemi Okenyodo, the executive director of the CLEEN Foundation, which monitors police and security forces in Nigeria. "Any crime that the public is strongly against it, it is easy to be used as a fluke for extrajudicial killings."

Government officials could not offer a breakdown of civilian, soldier and extremist deaths from Friday's fighting. Many of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition in fires that razed whole sections of the town, residents said. Those killed were buried as soon as possible, following local Muslim tradition.

Authorities also provide contradictory explanations about what really happened, as the military bans access for outside observers to an area officials want to describe as an insurgent stronghold.

Boko Haram members used heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the assault, which Brig. Gen. Austin Edokpaye said began after soldiers surrounded a mosque they believed was housing Boko Haram members. Extremists earlier had killed a military officer, officials said.

The fighting lasted for hours and the military said extremists used civilians as human shields— implying that soldiers opened fire in neighborhoods where they knew civilians lived. However, local residents who spoke to an Associated Press journalist who accompanied the state officials said soldiers purposefully set the fires during the attack.

Brig. Gen. Chris Olukolade, a military spokesman, on Tuesday declined to immediately answer other questions about the military's conduct and other issues surrounding the killings.

By the time Borno state officials could reach the city Sunday, a local government official said at least 185 people were killed, something not disputed by Edokpaye who accompanied officials on the visit. A spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross said Monday that at least 187 people had been killed, while another 77 were receiving medical treatment.

A statement issued Tuesday by Edokpaye said only six civilians died in the fighting Friday, as well as one soldier and some 30 extremists. The brigadier general also claimed extremist fighters used "anti-aircraft guns" in the attack, arms never seen used before in the three-year-old insurgency. The statement also said the fighting occurred on April 16 — three days before the violence actually happened.

Nigeria's presidency has said the death toll "may be grossly exaggerated," but federal lawmakers have started their own investigations into the killings.

While Nigerian forces have served as peacekeepers in other African conflicts, many in the country remain fearful of soldiers. Nigerian media regularly reports on incidents where soldiers beat civilians in traffic or fight police officers in their own country.

"Fighting in a built-up area is a very difficult operation, but that notwithstanding, there must be standard rules of engagement," Senate President David Mark said Tuesday. "Those rules of engagement would not include mass killings, or extrajudicial killings, in any form."

But extrajudicial killings routinely occur in Nigeria, with police routinely shooting dead suspected "armed robbers," human rights activists say. That same mentality, a hangover from the military era when soldiers would routinely shoot dead prisoners on the then-swampy beaches of Victoria Island in Lagos, persists today.

Speaking Wednesday, President Goodluck Jonathan promised any soldier or security force member found committing such crimes would be "cautioned and treated in line with our own laws and regulations." But the nation's courts routinely drag out cases and such prosecutions remain rarer still.

"The problem of extrajudicial executions in Nigeria is closely linked to the remarkable inadequacies of almost all levels of the Nigerian criminal justice system," a United Nations report in 2006 on the killings said. The same report described how soldiers often operate without any rules of engagement when facing a civilian population.

There are several major cases in Nigeria's recent history of soldier abuses. In 2001, the military attacked some seven villages in Benue state following ethnic Tiv militants killing soldiers there. Witnesses said some 200 people died in the fighting that saw soldiers ransack villages, shell houses and gun down residents indiscriminately. In 1999, ethnic Ijaw activists claimed more than 200 civilians were killed by the military in Odi in Bayelsa state following the killings of police officers there.

A military raid in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta state in 2010 against militants there killed some 150 people, activists said, though soldiers blocked AP journalists from reaching the area at the time. And in October 2012, when extremists killed a military officer in Maiduguri, soldiers killed at least 30 civilians and set fires across a neighborhood in retaliation. The military later denied committing the abuses.

"In such incidents it is assumed by officials that the armed forces acted in 'self-defense' or were otherwise justified in carrying out retaliatory executions of civilians," the 2006 U.N. report reads. "Thus, although the intentional killing of unarmed civilians, whether in situations of armed conflict or otherwise, is a clear violation of both international and Nigerian law, impunity is the reality."

And despite Nigeria's presidency promising an investigation into the Baga killings, the same may continue to happen today.

"There is a consistent pattern in responding to these incidents," the U.N. said. "Major human rights violations are alleged; the authorities announce an inquiry; and either the resulting reports are not published, or the recommendations are ignored."

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Associated Press writer Haruna Umar in Maiduguri, Nigeria, and Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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SAfrica police boss endorses officers in killings

MARIKANA, South Africa (AP) — South Africa's police chief said Tuesday she stands by her statement praising officers involved in the shooting massacre of 34 striking miners and insisting they were "just doing your work."

Evidence before the judicial commission questioning her Tuesday has indicated some miners were shot in the back as they tried to flee and others were killed when they already were wounded and no threat.

Gen. Riah Phiyega said "I stand by statement." She repeated that after a commissioner asked her if she might feel differently given other evidence that has come to light.

Police said they opened fire after striking miners attacked them. No police were hurt in the Aug. 16 incident at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, northwest of Johannesburg, that shocked the nation with its echoes of police brutality under apartheid. It was the worst state violence since that system of white minority rule ended in 1994.

Phiyega, who had been newly appointed, stuck to her story even after evidence leader Mbuyiseli Madlanga read testimony from a police officer who said that he was searching for other suspects when he heard a gunshot from behind, where he had left a group of wounded miners. He said he turned to see a constable putting a revolver back in its holster and, when he asked what was going on, the constable said: "They deserve to die."

Photographic evidence presented to the commission in November showed police may have altered the scene of the killings and planted weapons after they shot 112 miners, killing 34.

Photographs taken by police at night show more weapons by the dead bodies than there were in news photographs taken immediately after the violence.

Video evidence shown to the commission has also indicated that some of the slain miners were handcuffed.

Thousands of miners had been striking for six weeks in Marikana to demand more money. Twelve people had been killed before Aug. 16, including two police officers, in violence blamed on rivalry between two unions, including the government-allied National Union of Mineworkers. The day after the shootings, Phiyega told a gathering of officers, "I want to thank you once more for doing what you did ... All we did was our job, and to do it in the manner in which you were trained. ... Don't feel you are being persecuted as police — you were doing your work."

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Bodies exhumed in killings tied to Mandela ex-wife

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Forensic scientists on Tuesday exhumed two bodies believed to belong to young activists last seen 24 years ago at the home of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as police said they have opened a new murder investigation.

The case reopens a dark chapter in the life of the then-wife of Nelson Mandela. Many South Africans still revere the 76-year-old as "the mother of the nation," but others have feared as a vengeful and heartless operator. She had "the blood of African children on her hands," her former friend Xoliswa Falati told South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In the late 1990s, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that Madikizela-Mandela was responsible for the disappearances in November 1988 of 21-year-old Lolo Sono and his friend Sibuniso Tshabalala, 19. But nothing was done to pursue allegations she was directly involved in their killings, even though her chief bodyguard Jerry Richardson told the commission he and a colleague stabbed the young men to death on Madikizela-Mandela's orders.

Mortuary records indicate the two bodies that were unearthed on Tuesday had multiple stab wounds

In front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Madikizela-Mandela denied all knowledge of the two and said allegations she was involved in six other killings were rubbish. Madikizela-Mandela could not be reached for comment.

Richardson was head of the Mandela United Football Club, a crowd of young men who acted as Madikizela-Mandela's bodyguards and also as vigilantes who, some charge, she used to get rid of enemies.

On Tuesday, the African National Congress party — which Madikizela-Mandela serves as a recently re-elected member of the National Executive Council — orchestrated the ceremony that brought more than 100 family members to watch the uncovering of the skeletal remains believed to belong to Sono and Tshabalala.

Most attendees responded only lukewarmly to traditional ANC slogans, causing one official to urge them to respond with more vigor. Another told them to "make sure everyone knows you are ANC families."

ANC officials tried to prevent family members, some of whom have accused Madikizela-Mandela of killing their sons, from talking to reporters.

John Sono, uncle of one of the missing men, insisted on speaking, saying "We are getting some relief because we know that we are closing the chapter of 'we don't know' and we are opening the chapter of 'here lies our son.'"

When a journalist asked if he wanted justice, Sono said, "That one is still very far, we still need to talk about it," before an ANC official shoved his hand in front of TV microphones saying "No, no he can't answer that one."

Piers Pigou, the senior investigator for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission who cross-examined Madikizela-Mandela during its hearings, told The Associated Press that "I think the standard of proof used by the Truth Commission basically established prima facie (enough evidence to prosecute) cases against Mrs. Mandela and members of the Mandela United Football Club, including in the disappearances of Sono and Tshabalala."

Pigou said he found it particularly distressing to know that the men's bodies were taken to the mortuary the day after they disappeared, and that police were unable to link them to the two missing men who were being desperately sought by their families.

The commission lambasted police investigations into the disappearances, causing some to wonder whether the incompetence was purposeful. Pigou said there was "a pattern of incredibly incompetent investigations" with an "enormous number of missing dockets."

"Does it add up to a conspiracy or not that investigations were not being pursued when they could be pursued?" he asked.

This time, the two new murder dockets have been opened by the Hawks, the police priority investigative unit, Capt. Paul Ramaloko told The Associated Press.

He said there had been no investigation since the original case was opened and 1988 and closed soon after. "It's too early to be saying if we have suspects or not," Ramaloko, the Hawks spokesman, said, but added they were asking anyone with information about what happened 24 years ago to come forward.

Asked if investigators would be questioning Madikizela-Mandela, he said "At this stage we don't have an affidavit or statement guiding us to that direction, but should it transpire at a later stage, we would obviously do the right thing ... Whoever the investigation identifies as the suspect in this case, we would obviously bring the person forth to answer some questions."

At the truth commission, Nicodemus Sono, father of one of the missing men, described how Madikizela-Mandela had come to his home with his son held at gunpoint and his face bruised from beatings, in November 1988. Sono said she had demanded photographs and documents, telling the father that his son was a spy for the apartheid police.

Sono had begged her to give him back his son. But he said she had driven away saying "the movement" would decide what to do with him.

Nomsa Tshabalala, mother of the other missing man, accused Madikizela-Mandela of killing her son when she gave testimony to the commission. "I would request Winnie to give Siboniso back to me. I want Siboniso or his bones and remains," she said. "She knows, deep inside of her, she knows . I'd like to find out as the where my son has been buried."

On Tuesday, she stood with a stern face at the grave site at Avalon Cemetery as scientists wielding miniature trowels and paint brushes delicately uncovered a skeleton caked in red clay.

Madeleine Fullard, head of the missing persons department of the National Prosecuting Authority, cautioned the families that DNA tests must be done and it could be months before a definitive identification is made. Family members already have submitted DNA samples.

Fullard said her team stumbled on mortuary records a year ago that led to Tuesday's exhumation. An anthropologist in search of other records came across a document indicating the bodies of two young men with multiple stab wounds had been found lying in a field the day after the young men had disappeared. Those bodies had been buried in a paupers' grave with others at Avalon.

The scientists then searched through "hundreds, hundreds and more hundreds" of dusty archived dockets before they found the photographs of the bodies found in the field. All bodies brought to mortuaries are routinely photographed.

When they took the photos to the families and the young men were identified, everyone cried, including the scientists, Fullard said.

In 1991, Madikizela-Mandela was sentenced to six years' jail for kidnapping and assault in the death of 14-year-old James Seipei "Stompie" Moeketsi, who also had last been seen at her home and who was beaten to death. She appealed, the assault conviction was overturned and the sentence reduced to a suspended jail term.

Madikizela-Mandela could not immediately be reached for comment. She had been openly contemptuous of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission where she made an appearance 15 years ago. She has said that the commission headed by Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu had wrongfully sacrificed justice for reconciliation. She said Tutu never once asked her about all the years of torture, assault, death threats, banishment and 18 months of solitary confinement that she suffered while her husband was imprisoned and she became a leading symbol of the struggle in South Africa.

Tutu had begged her for the truth. "If you are able to bring yourself to say something went wrong, I beg you, I beg you, I beg you," he said. "You are a great person and you don't know how your greatness would be enhanced if you were to say: 'Sorry, things went wrong. Forgive me.'"

The commission noted her contempt "not only for the commission but for the notion of accountability." She had been incensed that the commission treated victims and perpetrators of apartheid equally.

"They have a nerve to suggest that freedom fighters who fought for freedom must account for their actions while the perpetrators of the worst atrocities are walking the streets laughing at the efforts of our struggle," she said at the time.

The final report said: "The commission finds that those who opposed Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela and the Mandela United Football Club, or dissented from them, were branded as informers, and killed. ... The commission finds further that Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela herself was responsible for committing such gross violations of human rights."

Madikizela-Mandela was separated from Mandela in 1992, two years after he was released from 27 years of incarceration. Their divorce was finalized in 1996. In 1994 he was elected president of South Africa, with the all-race vote marking the final blow to apartheid, the cruel system of white rule.

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Hostage killings a new, dangerous turn for Nigeria

KANO, Nigeria (AP) — Radical Islamic fighters killed seven foreign hostages in Nigeria, European diplomats said Sunday, making it the worst such kidnapping violence in decades for a country beset by extremist guerrilla attacks.

Nigeria's police, military, domestic spy service and presidency remained silent over the killings of the construction company workers, kidnapped Feb. 16 from northern Bauchi state. The government's silence only led to more questions about the nation's continued inability to halt attacks that have seen hundreds killed in shootings, church bombings and an attack on the United Nations.

The latest victims were four Lebanese and one citizen apiece from Britain, Greece and Italy.

Britain and Italy said all seven of those taken from the Setrapo construction company compound had died at the hands of Ansaru, a previously little-known splinter group of the Islamic sect Boko Haram. Greece also confirmed one of its citizens was killed, while Lebanese authorities didn't immediately comment.

"It's an atrocious act of terrorism, against which the Italian government expresses its firmest condemnation, and which has no explanation, if not that of barbarous and blind violence," a statement from Italy's foreign ministry read. Italy also flatly denied a claim by Ansaru that the hostages were killed before or during a military operation by Nigerian and British forces, saying there was "no military intervention aimed at freeing the hostages."

Italian Premier Mario Monti identified the slain Italian hostage as Silvano Trevisan and promised Rome would use "every effort" to stop the killers. British Foreign Secretary William Hague called the killings "an act of cold-blooded murder" and identified the U.K. victim as Brendan Vaughan.

A statement from Greece's foreign ministry said authorities had already informed the hostage's family.

"We note that the terrorists never communicated or formulated demands to release the hostages," the statement read, which also denied any military raid took place.

Ansaru issued a short statement Saturday saying its fighters kidnapped the foreigners from the construction company's camp at Jama'are, a town about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Bauchi, the capital of Bauchi state. In the attack, gunmen first assaulted a local prison and burned police trucks, authorities said. Then the attackers blew up a back fence at the construction company's compound and took over, killing a guard in the process, witnesses and police said.

Local officials in Nigeria initially identified one of the hostages as a Filipino, something the Philippines government later denied.

The gunmen appeared to be organized and knew who they wanted to target, leaving the Nigerian household staff at the residence unharmed, while quickly abducting the foreigners, a witness said.

In an online statement Saturday claiming the killings, Ansaru said it killed the hostages in part because of local Nigerian journalists reporting on the arrival of British military aircraft to Bauchi. However, Ansaru's statement cited local news articles that instead said the airplanes were spotted at the international airport in Abuja, the nation's central capital about 180 miles (290 kilometers) southwest.

The U.K. Defense Ministry said Sunday the planes it flew to Abuja ferried Nigerian troops and equipment to Bamako, Mali. Nigerian soldiers have been sent to Mali to help French forces and Malian troops battle Islamic extremists there. The British military said it also transported Ghanaian soldiers to Mali the same way.

The ministry declined to comment further. Ansaru had said it believed the planes were part of a Nigerian and British rescue mission for the abducted hostages.

The U.K. has offered military support in the past in Nigeria to free hostages. In March 2012, its special forces backed a failed Nigerian military raid to free Christopher McManus, who had been abducted months earlier with Italian Franco Lamolinara from a home in Kebbi state. Both hostages were killed in that rescue attempt.

"I am grateful to the Nigerian government for their unstinting help and cooperation," Hague said in a statement, without addressing the claim that the U.K. had launched a rescue effort.

In its statement Saturday, Ansaru also blamed the killings on a pledge by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to do "everything possible" to free the hostages. Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati didn't respond to requests for comment Sunday.

While Nigerian authorities have yet to comment publicly about Ansaru's claim, it comes as the nation's security forces remain unable to stop the guerrilla campaign of bombings, shootings and kidnappings across the country's north. The majority of those attacks have been blamed on Boko Haram, an amorphous group that grew out of the remains of a sect that sparked a riot and a security crackdown in Nigeria in 2009 in which about 700 people killed.

Boko Haram has hit international targets before, including an August 2011 car bombing of the U.N. office in Abuja that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100 others. An online video also purportedly claims that Boko Haram is currently holding hostage a family of seven French tourists who were abducted from neighboring Cameroon in late February. The group is blamed for killing at least 792 people last year alone, according to an Associated Press count.

Ansaru, which analysts believe split from Boko Haram in January 2012, seems to be focusing much more on Western targets. Analysts say it has closer links to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and cares more about international issues, as opposed to Boko Haram's largely local grievances. But much remains unknown about Ansaru, which so far has communicated through short, sometimes muddled online statements.

The hostage killings appear to be the worst in decades targeting foreigners working in Nigeria, an oil-rich nation that's a major crude supplier to the U.S. Most kidnappings in the country's southern oil delta see foreigners released after companies pay ransoms. The latest kidnappings in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, however, have seen the hostages killed either by their captors or in military raids to free them, suggesting a new level of danger for expatriate workers there.

The worst violence targeting foreign workers previously in the country's history came during its 1960s civil war. In May 1969, forces with the breakaway Republic of Biafra raided a Nigerian oil field, killing 10 Italian oil workers and a Jordanian. Eighteen other foreign workers taken by Biafran soldiers faced the death penalty, but later were pardoned and released.

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Associated Press writers Frances D'Emilio in Rome, Demetris Nellas in Athens, Greece, Sylvia Hui in London and Shehu Saulawa in Bauchi, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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