标签： Africa

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — In a landmark ruling for victim justice Tuesday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ordered a senior al-Qaida-linked extremist leader to pay 7.2 million euros ($8.4 million) in reparations for widespread atrocities he directed while leading the Islamic police in Mali’s ancient desert city of Timbuktu following the 2012 extremist takeover.

The defendant, Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, was convicted by the ICC last year on charges including torture, religious persecution, and multiple crimes against humanity, receiving a 10-year prison sentence. Judges confirmed that Al Hassan was a central architect of a brutal reign of terror that descended on Timbuktu after Islamic extremist rebels seized control of the city in 2012, leaving tens of thousands of residents harmed by systemic violence.

Presiding Judge Kimberly Prost told the The Hague-based courtroom that legal responsibility for the harm rests squarely with the convicted perpetrator. “Mr. Al Hassan, as the person found responsible for the crimes, which caused the harm to the victims, is the person financially liable for the cost of repairing the harm,” Prost said.

However, the court will not be able to collect the ordered sum directly from the 49-year-old, who was confirmed to be indigent before and during his trial, and was represented by a court-appointed attorney funded by the ICC. Instead, the ordered reparations for more than 65,000 identified victims will be disbursed through the ICC’s Trust Fund for Victims, a body established by the court’s member states to deliver compensation and support to those harmed by crimes falling under ICC jurisdiction.

Deborah Ruiz Verduzco, executive director of the Trust Fund for Victims, explained the body’s unique role under the ICC’s founding framework, the Rome Statute. “We are one of the many innovations of the Rome Statute,” Ruiz Verduzco told the Associated Press, noting that the fund exists specifically to address harm stemming from crimes within the court’s jurisdiction.

The fund’s 24-person team carries out a broad mandate: supporting victims and their families, developing community recovery programs in regions shattered by violence, and securing the financial resources needed to meet its commitments. In the fund’s 20 years of operation, this marks only the second time a perpetrator has been ordered to pay reparations — and only the first case where a court-ordered award will actually be distributed to mass victims. Previous payments from a perpetrator came in a separate earlier case.

ICC Presiding Judge Prost emphasized that significant targeted fundraising will be required to raise the full 7.2 million euro sum. The majority of the funds will be contributed by ICC member states, though the trust fund also accepts private donations from global supporters. Most recently, Germany donated 40,000 euros ($46,000) to the fund in March, and Sweden and the Netherlands stand as the body’s two largest national contributors.

While ICC judges oversee and finalize how reparations funds are allocated, they actively incorporate input from victims through their legal representatives and the trust fund. In Al Hassan’s case, the court ruled that the funds will be directed toward three core areas: socio-economic support for harmed communities, educational programs and vocational training for residents, and specialized psychological support for survivors. The ruling explicitly requires that programming prioritize women and girls, who faced disproportionate harm and gender-based violence during the extremist occupation of Timbuktu.

This is not the first time the trust fund has delivered recovery support to Timbuktu communities. In 2016, another al-Qaida-linked militant, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, pleaded guilty to the war crime of destroying Timbuktu’s iconic historic mausoleums. The trust fund launched a restoration project for the ruined cultural sites in 2021, marking an earlier step toward recovery for the region.

The ruling comes amid ongoing widespread instability in the Sahel region of West Africa. Mali, along with neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger, has faced a decade-long insurgency waged by armed extremist factions with ties to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. All three nations have experienced military coups in recent years, and their ruling juntas have expelled long-time Western security partners, most notably French counter-terrorism forces, and turned to Russia’s Wagner mercenary network for security assistance. The ICC’s decision was issued just days after an alliance of al-Qaida-linked militants and separatist fighters carried out the largest coordinated attack in Mali in more than 10 years, underscoring the persistent insecurity gripping the country.

KAMPALA, Uganda — A sweeping nationwide crackdown on unauthorized migration has led Ugandan law enforcement and internal affairs officials to detain more than 200 foreign nationals this week, with investigations linking many of the detainees to transnational human trafficking networks and organized cyber fraud operations, government representatives announced Tuesday.

The multi-location operation, which launched early Monday, unfolded across two key sites: a residential enclave in northern Uganda home to a large community of Nigerian migrants, and a tightly secured, closed-off residential compound in the heart of Kampala, Uganda’s capital. In total, 231 people have been placed in custody for questioning across both locations.

Officials with Uganda’s Ministry of Internal Affairs detailed that 169 detainees were discovered in the capital’s restricted compound, a self-contained apartment complex purpose-built to limit outside movement, complete with its own private restaurant and on-site amenities. Thirty-six of the people found at that site were women, and detainees held there held citizenship from across Asia and Africa, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Malaysia.

The operation was launched following verified intelligence reports that large groups of foreign nationals were residing and working in Uganda without the mandatory legal documentation required for residency or employment, ministry officials confirmed. During the raids, many detainees were found to be in possession of no valid passport or identity paperwork at all.

In an official public statement, the ministry outlined the preliminary findings from the operation: “Some individuals have claimed they were trafficked into Uganda with false promises of formal employment. Others were directly engaged in cyber-scamming activities. A few were found in possession of materials linking them to additional other criminal enterprises.”

Simon Peter Mundeyi, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, explained to the Associated Press that the detainees are currently being held at two separate processing facilities and divided into three distinct categories for assessment: confirmed or suspected trafficking victims, alleged criminal perpetrators of trafficking and cybercrime, and migrants who simply overstayed their valid visas without engaging in any illegal activity.

Mundeyi confirmed that both trafficking victims and visa overstayers will be assisted to process voluntary departure from Uganda, though they will be required to cover the cost of their own return travel tickets. Suspected ringleaders of trafficking and fraud networks, by contrast, will face formal criminal prosecution in Ugandan courts before potential deportation following any completed sentence.

Unlike many regional peers, Uganda has long cultivated a reputation for being open to foreign arrivals and hosting displaced people. The East African nation currently hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing violent conflict in neighboring states including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and South Sudan. It also maintains a liberal visa policy that waives entry visa requirements for short-term visits from citizens of dozens of African and global countries.

Amid a fresh wave of armed conflict in South Sudan’s Jonglei State, thousands of displaced civilians trapped in an isolated, swamp-ringed village have been blocked from receiving emergency humanitarian aid by government officials, military and local authorities, according to eyewitness accounts and statements from leading international aid organizations interviewed by the Associated Press.

The crisis began in December 2023, when opposition forces aligned with Riek Machar — the long-time political rival of President Salva Kiir who was suspended from his post as first vice president and placed under house arrest last year over alleged subversion — seized multiple military outposts across Jonglei. Government counteroffensives the following month pushed thousands of civilians to flee their homes, many toward the remote settlement of Nyatim, a day’s walk from the contested town of Lankien. Among the evacuees was Thomas Nim, a 43-year-old pharmacist who trekked through swampland with his pregnant wife, three children and elderly mother to escape advancing government troops. “Some of the most vulnerable, like the elderly and children, ended up in Nyatim because they couldn’t make it any farther,” Nim explained to the AP.

Trapped in the desolate location with no access to clean water or sufficient food, displaced residents relied on a Starlink satellite internet connection to send out pleas for emergency assistance. Eyewitnesses report dozens of people have already died, many from apparent starvation, with residents reduced to foraging for leaves and wild roots to stay alive.

When international aid groups including Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) applied for official government clearance to deliver relief supplies to Nyatim, their requests were repeatedly rejected. “It was a ‘no’ from local and national authorities and from the military,” stated Yashovardhan, MSF’s South Sudan mission head, who uses a single name. WFP country director Adham Effendi confirmed the blockade, noting the agency had been blocked despite “numerous engagements with both national and local authorities” — an unusually public rebuke from an agency that has historically avoided public criticism of South Sudan’s government over aid access restrictions.

Both government and opposition representatives have traded blame for the ongoing crisis. Gatkhor Dual, an opposition aid coordinator in Jonglei, accused county commissioner James Bol Makuei of intentionally cutting off aid to the area because he believes Nyatim’s residents support the opposition. Makuei has countered that access is restricted because the population estimate of 30,000 cited by MSF is exaggerated, and claimed the main opposition group SPLM-IO is holding civilians hostage in the area to gain political leverage and attract aid near the county seat of government. But Nim, the displaced pharmacist who fled to Nyatim, denies any opposition military presence in the village.

While concerns over aid diversion are not unfounded in South Sudan — where armed groups on both sides have a long track record of seizing humanitarian supplies for military use, and the U.N. reports fighters looted more than two dozen aid-run health facilities during recent Jonglei fighting — the blockade has left thousands of vulnerable people with no source of life-sustaining support. Some residents have already abandoned the remote village and returned to their conflict-ruined homes out of desperation. “People are returning to their homes,” said Koang Pajok, one of those who left Nyatim. “There was no food and shelter.”

Delivering aid across South Sudan has long been a challenge, hampered by crumbling infrastructure, repeated attacks on river transport routes, and mandatory bureaucratic clearance from government officials. The ongoing crisis in Nyatim has deepened an already catastrophic humanitarian situation across the region: in the nearby community of Chuil, where the government has allowed aid access, MSF screening in March found more than half of 1,000 tested children were acutely malnourished. The aid organization has been forced to repeatedly expand its small treatment facility in Chuil from four beds to 100 to keep up with the influx of starving civilians.

Barred from overland or river access to remote areas, WFP has carried out airdrops of 415 metric tons of food to the Chuil region since March. But the arrival of aid has also drawn armed men with military weapons to the area, sparking fears the site could become a target for airstrikes. When a surveillance plane flew over the region in April, anxious civilians scattered, recalling that a similar overflight preceded a December airstrike on Lankien that killed at least 11 civilians.

The current crisis is the latest chapter in decades of cyclical violence in South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011 before descending into a civil war between Kiir and Machar that killed an estimated 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018. A 2018 peace deal formed a fragile unity government between the two rivals, but fighting has reemerged in recent months, with consistent reports that armed groups on both sides have weaponized aid to punish civilian populations aligned with opposing factions.

This reporting is supported by a grant from the Gates Foundation, with the AP retaining full editorial control over all content.

In a devastating act of violence that has deepened concerns over persistent insecurity in Nigeria’s restive northeast, gunmen aligned with the Islamic State group have killed at least 29 civilians in a targeted assault on a remote village in Adamawa State, local government officials have confirmed. The attack, which the terror group has claimed responsibility for without outlining a clear motive, unfolded in the village of Guyaku, located within the Gombi local government area, and unfolded over the course of several hours, according to state authorities. Witness accounts and official reports detail that militants first stormed a local football pitch where community members had gathered for a public event, opening fire indiscriminately on unarmed civilians before launching a coordinated arson attack that destroyed dozens of residential homes, local places of worship, and hundreds of civilian motorcycles. In the wake of the bloodshed, Adamawa State Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri traveled directly to the attack site to assess the damage and meet with affected community members, sharing on-the-ground photos of his visit and condemning the violence as a fundamental “affront to our humanity”. In a public post shared to his Facebook page, the governor’s spokesperson captured the raw mood gripping the small, close-knit community, writing that “the atmosphere in the community remains tense, with grief and fear evident” following the carnage. Many residents, the spokesperson added, have already fled their homes in search of safer ground, driven out by widespread anxiety that follow-up attacks could target the area in the coming days. Governor Fintiri moved quickly to reassure the public in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, affirming that “We are intensifying security operations immediately to restore peace and ensure every resident feels safe in their home again.” The region where the attack took place, which sits along Nigeria’s porous border with Cameroon, has been plagued by near-constant violence linked to Islamist militant factions and local criminal gangs for more than a decade. The current wave of instability traces its origins back to 2009, when the jihadist group Boko Haram launched a full-scale insurgency focused on establishing an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. According to international aid organizations, the decades-long conflict has claimed the lives of more than 35,000 people and forced over 2 million Nigerians to flee their homes as internally displaced persons, while violence has spilled across national borders into neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. In recent years, Boko Haram has fractured into rival factions, with the larger breakaway group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), aligning itself with the global Islamic State network and carrying out regular attacks against civilian and military targets across the region. Earlier this month, Nigerian courts concluded mass trials that saw almost 400 convicted individuals handed down sentences for their ties to both Boko Haram and ISWAP, marking one of the largest crackdowns on militant affiliation in the country’s recent history. The latest attack comes as the Nigerian federal government faces mounting domestic and international pressure to rein in widespread insecurity across the country, with general elections scheduled for January drawing increased global scrutiny of the administration’s ability to protect civilians and maintain stability. Late last year, the United States launched what it described as “powerful and deadly” drone strikes against IS-aligned militants operating in northwest Nigeria, marking a escalation of international counter-terrorism cooperation in the region even as militant factions continue to carry out high-profile attacks against soft civilian targets.

Nigeria is reeling from two back-to-back violent incidents that have underscored the long-running, deep-seated security crisis plaguing the West African nation, with at least 29 villagers confirmed dead following an overnight Islamic State militant attack in the country’s northeast, and eight young pupils still missing after armed gunmen abducted 23 children from a north-central orphanage.

The first assault unfolded late Sunday in Guyaku, a small rural settlement located within Gombi Local Government Area of Adamawa State, senior state authorities confirmed on Monday. Shortly after the attack, the Islamic State group issued a claim of responsibility via a statement posted to the encrypted messaging platform Telegram.

During an on-site visit to the impacted village Monday, Adamawa State Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri publicly condemned the violence, labeling the attack a tragic event that has no place in civilized society. Two main militant factions aligned with the Islamic State currently operate across Nigerian territory, but officials have not yet confirmed which cell carried out the Guyaku assault. The Islamic State West Africa Province, better known by its acronym ISWAP, maintains an active presence across northeastern states including Adamawa, while a second IS-linked faction, referred to locally as Lakurawa, typically stages attacks further west in the north-central states of Sokoto and Kebbi.

The Guyaku attack coincided with a separate mass abduction in north-central Nigeria, where armed assailants stormed an orphanage operated by an unregistered school on the same Sunday. The raiders abducted 23 young pupils from the facility, located in an isolated district of Lokoja, the capital of Kogi State. Kogi State government spokesperson Kingsley Femi Fanwo confirmed in an official statement that the Dahallukitab Group of Schools, which ran the orphanage, was operating without legal authorization.

Security forces have since launched intensive search and rescue operations, and have successfully rescued 15 of the 23 abducted children. Authorities said operations are ongoing to recover the remaining eight captives and apprehend the perpetrators behind the raid. While no militant or criminal group has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the abduction, the region has seen a sharp surge in kidnapping-for-ransom attacks in recent months. In Nigeria, the term “pupil” generally refers to children enrolled in kindergarten or primary school, meaning the captives are likely aged 12 or younger.

Kidnappings targeting students and educational institutions have become one of the most visible markers of Nigeria’s ongoing insecurity. Regional security analysts note that armed gangs and militant networks deliberately target schools and children as strategic, high-impact targets, as such attacks draw widespread media and government attention and often yield large ransom payments.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has grappled with a persistent, multifaceted insurgency in its northern regions for more than 20 years, with overlapping conflicts involving IS-aligned insurgents, bandit gangs, and separatist militias that have killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. Earlier this year, the United States deployed a contingent of troops to Nigeria to provide advisory support to Nigerian military forces leading counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations across the country.

This report was compiled with additional on-the-ground reporting from Sophie Banchereau, based in Dakar, Senegal.

DAKAR, Senegal — In a dramatic escalation of extremist violence that has already made the Sahel the world’s deadliest region for terror activity, an unprecedented coordinated assault by an alliance of al-Qaida-linked militants and Tuareg separatists has shaken Mali, delivering a direct challenge to the West African nation’s military government and its new security partner Russia.

The weekend offensive, the largest coordinated attack the country has seen in more than a decade, hit targets across the breadth of Mali simultaneously, marking a new level of operational planning and ambition for the combined insurgent forces. While Malian authorities have yet to release an official casualty count, analysts confirmed on Monday that the scope of the operation — both in the number of targeted locations and the high-profile nature of the sites hit — has no recent parallel in the country’s long-running security crisis.

Attackers struck the international airport in the capital Bamako, the adjacent military garrison town of Kati, and multiple population centers in northern and central Mali, including the contested cities of Kidal and Sevare. In a high-profile loss for the Bamako government, a car bomb targeting the defense minister’s residence just outside the capital killed him instantly. For the separatist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), the weekend operation marked a symbolic and strategic victory: the group confirmed Monday it has retaken full control of Kidal, the northern city whose initial seizure by a similar insurgent alliance back in 2012 launched the decade-long cycle of instability that continues to engulf the Sahel.

The Sahel, a vast arid belt stretching across Africa south of the Sahara Desert, has rapidly emerged as the global epicenter of extremist violence over the past two decades. Data from the 2023 Global Terrorism Index, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, shows the region now accounts for 51% of all deaths from violent extremism worldwide — a staggering jump from just 1% 20 years ago. Since 2019 alone, fatalities from extremist attacks in the Sahel have risen nearly tenfold. For Mali, a landlocked country at the heart of the crisis, overlapping threats have persisted for more than a decade: al-Qaida and Islamic State-affiliated militant networks have expanded their hold across remote areas, while a long-running Tuareg separatist insurgency has fought for an independent state in the country’s north.

This is not the first time separatist and jihadist forces have aligned against the Malian government. In 2012, a similar partnership seized most of northern Mali, collapsing central state authority and triggering a French military intervention to push insurgent forces back. Today, the leading jihadist actor in the alliance is Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaida-linked group that has expanded dramatically across the Sahel in recent years. The group now controls vast swathes of territory, and had already blockaded Mali’s capital for months to cut off fuel supplies before the weekend offensive. JNIM’s operations extend far beyond Mali’s borders: the group is active in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger, and its attacks have reached into coastal West African states including Benin, Ivory Coast, and Togo.

The group has built substantial funding to sustain its large-scale operations, analysts note. JNIM generates revenue through a range of illicit activities: it imposes informal taxes on local populations, steals cattle, controls lucrative artisanal gold mining operations, and uses sieges, kidnappings, and bombings to dominate key regional supply routes. Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told reporters the group entered the weekend offensive with a “full war chest” after reportedly collecting at least $50 million in ransom for the 2023 kidnapping of an Emirati member of the Dubai royal family and two of his business associates, who were abducted near Bamako.

On the separatist side, decades of campaigning for an independent northern state of Azawad led separate Tuareg-led factions to merge in 2024 into the unified Azawad Liberation Front, which partnered with JNIM for the weekend assault. Despite clear ideological divides between the Salafi-jihadist vision of JNIM and the separatist nationalist goals of the FLA, the two groups share a core objective: pushing Malian government forces and their Russian allies out of the territories both movements claim in northern and central Mali. “Despite their different worldviews, their shared enemy unites them,” explained Rida Lyammouri, senior fellow at the Moroccan-based Policy Center for the New South.

The offensive comes amid a dramatic shift in Mali’s foreign and security policy, after the country’s military junta — which seized power in 2020 — cut ties with long-time Western security partners including France and the United Nations, turning instead to Moscow for security support. The shift was driven by widespread popular discontent: after nearly a decade of French counter-terror deployments and UN peacekeeping operations, extremist attacks continued to multiply, government control over territory eroded steadily, and civilians bore the overwhelming brunt of the violence. Mali, along with neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso — all now ruled by military juntas that took power via coups — have formed their own regional bloc, the Alliance of Sahel States, and forced Western and UN forces to withdraw entirely from their territory.

Today, Mali’s primary security partner is Russia’s newly formed Africa Corps, a defense ministry-affiliated military unit that an estimated 2,000 troops deployed across the country. But independent analysts warn the security situation across the Sahel has only deteriorated sharply since the juntas took power and Western forces withdrew. The region is now recording record numbers of attacks, with civilians killed by both insurgent groups and pro-government forces at all-time highs. Laessing argues that French and UN peacekeeping forces effectively filled the governance and security vacuum left by a chronically weak Malian state, particularly in the remote north and central regions. Their departure eliminated livelihood opportunities for many local residents, leaving young people vulnerable to jihadist recruitment, he added.

Russian support has failed to fill that security gap, and the weekend offensive has exposed the weakness of Moscow’s position in Mali. Just two days after FLA spokespersons announced the group had seized full control of Kidal, the Africa Corps confirmed on its official Telegram channel that its forces had withdrawn from the strategic northern city. Kidal has long been symbolic of Mali’s security crisis: it was first seized by the 2012 jihadist-separatist alliance, and its recapture by Malian government forces and Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in 2023 was hailed as a major victory for the Bamako-Moscow partnership. The FLA said in a Saturday statement that it had negotiated a peaceful withdrawal agreement, with a convoy of remaining Russian and Malian troops departing the former UN peacekeeping base in Kidal under rebel escort.

The weekend coordinated attack came well after Bamako was already weakened by months of JNIM pressure. For months before the offensive, the group carried out relentless attacks on fuel tankers traveling into Mali from neighboring Senegal and Ivory Coast, creating a crippling fuel shortage in the capital long before the Iran conflict tightened global energy supplies. Photos from Bamako showed long queues snaking around city gas stations, with the Malian army only able to provide partial relief by escorting small convoys into the capital. A fragile truce reached in late March collapsed shortly before the weekend attacks, with JNIM resuming its assault on supply routes.

Analysts say the blockade and the latest large-scale offensive are aimed at undermining the legitimacy of Mali’s military government, pressuring businesses and ordinary residents to distance themselves from the junta. Unlike some extremist groups, JNIM does not appear to be aiming to seize direct control of the capital or establish formal rule over all of Mali, instead focusing on weakening the central state to expand its own control over rural and remote territories.