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African press review 10 September 2014

Nigerian police are missing after a Boko Haram attack. SA police deny political pressure ahead of the Marikana massacre. A witness at the ICC Kenya trial recants. And there’s praise for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

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The main story in this morning's Nigerian Guardian says 20 police officers are still missing following a Boko Haram attack on a police training camp in Borno State.

Yesterday Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the fundamentalist armed group, claimed the capture of Bama in Borno State and three towns in neighbouring Adamawa by his fighters.

The authorities in Cameroon claim that soldiers killed “more than 100” Boko Haram fighters during an attempted incursion by the insurgents at the weekend.

South Africa's national police commissioner Riah Phiyega is likely to have a rough time when she testifies later today at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry, according to the front page of the Johannesburg-based financial paper, BusinessDay.

Since she testified in March last year, the inquiry has heard a recording of a conversation between North West police commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo and Lonmin’s Barnard Mokwena, in which Mbombo spoke of political "pressure" on Phiyega.

New information has also emerged about a meeting of senior police officers   including Phiyega   on the night before the day that 34 mineworkers were shot dead by police at Marikana.

The police have consistently denied that there was any political influence on the decision to disarm and disperse the strikers or on the timing of the operation.

Further down the same front page, BusinessDay reports that South Africa's current account deficit widened more than expected in the second three months of this year. But, perhaps surprisingly, business confidence has improved. Admittedly, those separate facts come from two different stories.

Strikes, weak global demand and declining commodity prices are the main factors contributing to the widening gap between imports and exports and dividend payments to and from global investors.

But South African business people are broadly confident according to a study released yesterday.

The business confidence index rose five points to 46 in the second quarter. It remains below the desired level of at least 50.

In Kenya the Standard reports that a witness yesterday told the International Criminal Court that he was advised by his priest to confess that he had falsely accused Deputy President William Ruto of instigating the 2008 post-election violence.

Witness 604 told the Hague-based court that he consulted his priest early last month and told him he had recorded a false statement linking Ruto and radio journalist Joshua Sang to the violence.

The priest told the witness to return to court and tell the truth.

Ruto and Sang are accused of complicity in organising the violence which followed the 2007 Kenyan presidential election.

The witness, who has already been declared hostile by the Trial Chamber, has been testifying since last Thursday by videolink from Nairobi. A witness is considered hostile if his evidence at different hearings is clearly contradictory.

Also in the Standard, news that the dispute between the two teachers' unions escalated yesterday after the Kenya National Union of Teachers asked the government to revoke recognition of the rival Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers.

Over at the Daily Nation, a follow-up to yesterday's shoe-throwing story.

Police now suspect that youths who heckled President Uhuru Kenyatta at a rally in Migori could have been hired by a local politician.

Officers are tracking transactions between the MP and 10 people arrested in connection with the disruption of the presidential function on Monday.

Police say a senior politician is likely to be arrested in connection with the fracas.

The Daily Monitor in Uganda salutes the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which has been trying genocide suspects in Arusha, Tanzania. The tribunal has now ceased operations.

The tribunal was established by the United Nations Security Council to try those suspected of planning and executing the murder of one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994.

Ninety-three suspects faced trial before the tribunal. Sixty-one were convicted, with 14 of them subsequently acquitted on appeal.

Those convicted were given sentences ranging from six years in jail to life imprisonment.
 

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