Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta is accused of crimes against humanity, including murder and persecution. The son of Kenya’s founding president. Lost 2002 elections to Mwai Kibaki but backed him in 2007. Like President Kibaki, a member of Kenya’s Kikuyu community – the country’s largest.

Accused of developing a plan to take revenge for attacks on Kikuyus and keep Kibaki in power. Kenyatta was allegedly the focal point between the government and the Kikuyu Mungiki sect, which was sent to the Rift Valley, setting up road blocks and going house-to-house, killing some 150 suspected Odinga supporters.

Cabinet secretary Francis Mutaura is a right-hand man of President Mwai Kibaki and seen as one of the most powerful unelected figures in the country. A former Kenyan ambassador at the United Nations and the European Union. From the Meru community, which is closely linked to President Kibaki’s Kikuyu group.

Accused of developing a plan with Kenyatta and Ali to take revenge for attacks on Kikuyus and keep Kibaki in power. Muthaura allegedly met Mungiki leaders and ordered the police to let Mungiki members through road blocks while using excessive force against supporters of Raila Odinga.

Former Education Minister William Ruto is one of the most influential people in the Rift Valley, where the worst violence took place. Suspended as minister in October after being accused of corruption over land deal, he flew to The Hague in November to try to clear his name.

William Ruto is accused of planning even before the election to set up militias to attack supporters of President Kibaki. Alleged to have urged his supporters to uproot the weeds from the fields – referring to communities in the Rift Valley with origins elsewhere in the country.

Reporter and executive of Kass FM radio, Joshua arap Sang Hosted morning shows on a Kalenjin-language radio station during the post-election violence in 2007/2008.

Joshua arap Sang is accused of planning attacks, along with Kosgey and Ruto, as well as whipping up ethnic hatred on the airwaves. Worst atrocity was the burning of a church near Eldoret where ethnic Kikuyus were sheltering.

Ms Mukoko is among 18 leading activists to be detained just two months after they were released on bail. The activists say they were tortured into making false confessions. The party of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has warned that the move could threaten the future of Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government.

“Today’s ruling seriously threatens not only the life and health of the inclusive government, but its longevity and durability,” a statement from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said. It added that the decision “threatens the goodwill” Zimbabwe has received from the international community.

Torture claims

Magistrate Catherine Chimanda in Harare said she was revoking bail because a formal indictment had been filed a day earlier. It accuses Ms Mukoko and the others of sabotage, terrorism and banditry. The suspects – who include several MDC members – were detained in December for three months.

They were charged with attempting to overthrow Mr Mugabe’s government and replace it with one headed by Mr Tsvangirai. Some had fallen ill and were put under police guard in hospital. Ms Mukoko, the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, was granted medical treatment at a previous court hearing after she said she had been tortured.

The latest detentions will be seen as another blow to the authority of Zimbabwe’s new power-sharing government, which has been struggling to resolve a plethora of political and economic issues, says the BBC’s Southern Africa correspondent, Peter Biles.

Kidnapped men have been forced to work on farmland controlled by Janjaweed militias, the Darfur Consortium says. Eyewitnesses also say the Sudanese army has been involved in abducting women and children to be sex slaves and domestic staff for troops in Khartoum.

Up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes since conflict began in Darfur in 2003. Sudan’s government has not yet commented on the allegations in the report, published on Wednesday.

The Darfur Consortium says it has around 100 eyewitness accounts from former abductees.

Refugee

Being in a refugee camp is no safeguard against attack by militiamen
Thousands of people from non-Arabic speaking ethnic groups in Darfur have been targeted, its report says. Victims have been rounded up during joint attacks on villages by the Arabic-speaking Janjaweed and the Sudanese Armed Forces, according to the study.

Civilians are also tortured and killed while their villages are razed to ethnically cleanse areas, which are then repopulated with Arabic-speaking people, including nomads from Chad, Niger, Mali and Cameroon, it says.
They were kept telling us that we are not human beings and we are here to serve them

Most of the abductees are women and girls, but there is new evidence in Darfur of kidnappers targeting men and boys for forced agricultural labor, says the report. The abducted women and girls, meanwhile, are raped and forced to marry their captors as well as carry out household chores and sometimes cultivate crops.

Child refugee

Kidnapped children are made domestic slaves, says the study
One boy said he had suffered regular beatings from his Janjaweed abductors. They were treating me and the other boys very badly, they kept telling us that we are not human beings and we are here to serve them, I also worked on their farms,” he said.

A woman said she was kidnapped from a refugee camp and her captors “used us like their wives in the night and during the day we worked all the time. “The men they abducted with us were used to look after their livestock. We worked all day, all week with no rest.”

Sudan’s government has always denied the existence of slavery in the country, although Khartoum has previously admitted abductions occurred in the north-south civil war of 1983-2005, when up to 14,000 people were kidnapped.
But a senior Sudanese politician who did not wanted to be named said kidnappings had also occurred more recently in Darfur. “The army captured many children and women hiding in the bush outside burnt villages,” he told the report’s authors.

“They were transported by plane to Khartoum at night and divided up among soldiers as domestic workers and, in some cases, wives.”

Call to action

The report urged Sudan’s government to disband the Janjaweed and other militia and to fully co-operate with the United Nations and the African Union.

Dismas Nkunda, co-chair of the Darfur Consortium, said: “Urgent action is clearly required to prevent further abductions and associated human rights violations, and to release and assist those who are still being held.”

The study also calls for the mandate of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur (Unamid) to be beefed up so it can use force to protect civilians.

The Darfur Consortium also wants Khartoum to prosecute all those responsible for abductions and ban them from holding public office. It notes that no-one has ever been arrested over the wave of kidnappings

A second prominent opposition parliamentarian arrested at the same time, Ngarlejy Yorongar, resurfaced in the last few days. He told Human Rights Watch that after 18 days in government custody he had escaped and is now in Cameroon. According to Yorongar, Ibni was beaten during his arrest and was in bad health when Yorongar last saw him.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch said that a commission of inquiry announced by Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno and heralded by French President Nicolas Sarkozy during his recent visit to Chad lacks independence and credibility because it is headed by the president of the Chadian National Assembly, a close ally of President Déby.

“President Sarkozy has come and gone, and Ibni is still missing,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “A commission run by a member of Chad’s ruling party can’t be independent. President Déby has pulled the wool over President Sarkozy’s eyes.”

A Human Rights Watch investigation in Chad determined that Ibni, spokesman for a coalition of opposition political parties, Lol Mahamat Choua, a former president of Chad, and Yorongar, president of the political party Fédération Action pour la République, were seized on February 3, 2008 by state security forces. Their arrests were part of a crackdown on political opponents in the capital N’Djamena following a coup attempt by Chadian rebels in early February.

On February 27, during a visit to Chad by President Sarkozy, President Déby said that Chad had established “an international commission of inquiry to shed light on the series of events that took place in N’Djamena” during the rebel attack. He said the commission would be led by the National Assembly president, Nassour Ouaidou Guelendouksia, a member of President Déby’s party and a former prime minister. The commission’s mandate is not limited to the question of the “disappeared” politicians. According to the decree creating the commission, its mandate covers “the Sudanese aggression of January 28 – February 8.” The commission will have 11 members, including seven Chadians and one each from the European Union, the African Union, France and the International Organization of La Francophonie.

On February 27, President Déby stated that the rebel attack “caused the death and disappearances of more than 400 civilians, including the leaders of political parties,” which suggests an attempt to blame the rebels for the “disappearance” of Ibni. President Déby also said that “certain leaders of political parties, such as Lol Mahamat Choua, who were found with the rebels, were arrested.”

The Chadian government on February 14 had acknowledged custody of Lol Mahamat Choua. After being placed under house arrest, he has since been released. President Déby said that the “international inquiry will look at what Lol was up to during that period.”

(Paris, February 26, 2008) – A Human Rights Watch investigation in Chad has determined that two opposition politicians whom the government says it is not holding were in fact seized by state security forces on February 3. Their arrests were part of a crackdown on political opponents in the capital N’Djamena following a coup attempt by Chadian rebels in early February.

On February 21, the Chadian government stated that an official inquiry had been unable to locate Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh, spokesman for a coalition of opposition political parties, and Ngarlejy Yorongar, a prominent opposition member of parliament, nor determine the circumstances of their disappearance.

Interior Minister Ahamat Mahamat Bachir later that day announced that Yorongar had been seen in his neighborhood the day before. However, multiple eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch researchers in N’Djamena that Chadian government soldiers took the two men into custody on February 3. Yorongar’s family and lawyers deny that he resurfaced.
“The government says it doesn’t know how Yorongar and Ibni disappeared,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Our inquiry leaves little doubt that it was the government which took them, and we hold the government fully responsible for their well-being and safe return.”

Interior Minister Bachir on February 14 said that the two were seized at a time when rebel forces controlled their N’Djamena neighborhoods, suggesting that the rebels were responsible. Human Rights Watch’s investigation found, however, that in each instance government security forces had reasserted full control over the neighborhoods in question before the reported time of their arrests.

According to eyewitnesses, on February 3 at about 5:30 p.m., soldiers arrived at the home of Ngarlejy Yorongar, president of the political party Federation Action for the Republic (Fédération Action pour la République, FAR). Rebel forces began before noon that day to withdraw from the area, the Moursal neighborhood in N’Djamena’s 6th district, and by 3 p.m. only government forces were seen in the area. Eyewitnesses provided Human Rights Watch with detailed information about the soldiers’ uniforms, insignia and vehicles, indicating that they were members of the Chadian National Army (Armée Nationale Tchadiènne, ANT). These included shoulder patches bearing the Chadian flag, distinctive yellow epaulet bars, and camouflage patterns and colors of uniforms and turbans that were all recognized to be Chadian army.

According to eyewitnesses, about 10 government soldiers forced their way into Yorongar’s home after pounding on his gate. A like number of soldiers waited in the street outside.

An eyewitness described Yorongar’s seizure: “The soldiers didn’t hesitate. They went straight to Yorongar and took him and pushed him. He [Yorongar] said, ‘It’s not necessary to be violent. I’m going with you.’”

Yorongar was last seen being pushed into a new, beige Toyota four-wheel drive vehicle, of a type that is standard issue in the Chadian army. The vehicle had no license plates.

After Interior Minister Bachir announced on February 21 that Yorongar had re-appeared near his house, Foreign Minister Ahmad Allam-Mi accused Yorongar of playing “hide and seek.” Yorongar’s family denied having seen him and accused the government of “moral torture” by making false claims about Yorongar’s whereabouts.

Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh, the spokesman of the Coordination for the Defense of the Constitution (Coordination Pour la Défense de la Constitution, CPDC) was also taken away on February 3. At about 7:30 p.m., approximately 10 heavily armed soldiers in a beige Toyota four-wheel drive vehicle arrived at Ibni’s home. As of 3 p.m. that day, only government soldiers were seen in the area, the Deux Chateaux neighborhood in N’Djamena’s 4th district.

An eyewitness told Human Rights Watch: “The soldiers said, ‘Who is the owner of this house?’ Ibni [Saleh] responded very quietly. He said, ‘It’s me.’ They shoved him and his glasses fell, but they didn’t let him pick them up. The soldiers put him in the back of a truck and took him away. He didn’t resist.”

Eyewitnesses similarly detailed the soldiers’ uniforms as those of the Chadian army.

On February 22 the Chadian government announced it would establish a commission of inquiry, “open to the international community if necessary,” to determine the whereabouts of the two missing opposition leaders.

Human Rights Watch is concerned that the two men are victims of enforced disappearance. The International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, which Chad signed on February 6, 2006, defines an enforced disappearance as “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.”

“The Chadian government should publicly acknowledge the whereabouts of Yorongar and Ibni,” said Gagnon. “They should be released immediately, or charged with a crime and accorded all their rights, including immediate access to a lawyer and family, a medical examination, and a hearing before an impartial judge to determine the lawfulness of their detention.”

On February 14, the Chadian government acknowledged custody of another prominent opposition parliamentarian, Lol Mahamat Choua, who had previously been missing. An official described the 70-year-old former president as a “prisoner of war,” saying that he had been “captured on the battlefield” at rebel “headquarters.” According to eyewitnesses, however, Choua was taken away from his home on February 3 at about 5:30 p.m. by approximately 15 soldiers wearing khaki uniforms and turbans. Information provided by eyewitnesses suggests that Choua’s arrest may have been carried out by the Presidential Guard, a branch of the Chadian army that reports directly to President Déby. Two eyewitnesses described the soldiers’ rifles as black, and Presidential Guard soldiers bear assault rifles that are distinct from those issued to other branches of the military in part because of their matte black finish. A third eyewitness said the soldiers bore Presidential Guard logos on their uniforms.

Choua headed a committee implementing an August 2007 agreement between the government and numerous political parties, overseen by the European Union, to implement reforms culminating in free and transparent elections by 2009. Choua is being held without charge in a military prison in N’Djamena. He has been visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the French ambassador, and by the European Commission’s delegate in N’Djamena. To date, Choua has been denied visits by family members and his lawyer.

Jean-Bernard Padaré, an attorney who has defended high-profile human rights and civil rights cases in Chad, has received death threats on his mobile phone by unknown persons since he filed a civil suit to learn the whereabouts of the politicians. Padaré has also been subject to harassment and intimidation by persons unknown to him, including on February 20 while in the presence of a Human Rights Watch researcher. In that instance, a man in civilian attire was waiting at Padaré’s car late at night. When confronted, the man concealed what could have been a weapon, walked quickly to a nearby car with yellow governmental license plates and drove away.

Human Rights Watch has confirmed the attempted seizure of other prominent opposition politicians in the immediate aftermath of the February 2-3 coup attempt. Government soldiers attempting to seize opposition politician Saleh Kebzabo at his home in N’Djamena on the evening of February 3 shot and injured a member of his family, according to eyewitnesses. Soldiers in two trucks stopped at the home of Salibou Garba, the secretary of Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh’s CCPD coalition, on two occasions on the night of February 3-4, at 7:30 p.m. and again at 2 a.m., according to eyewitnesses, but he was not there. Eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that two men who may have been government intelligence agents visited the home of opposition parliamentarian Wadal Abdelkader Kamougué on February 4.

Human Rights Watch urged concerned governments to press the Chadian government for the release or charge of the opposition politicians. On February 11, European Union Commissioner Louis Michel called for the “immediate release” of the opposition politicians, a call that was joined on February 22 by Jean Ping, chairperson of the African Union Commission. The 27 EU foreign ministers, on February 18, expressed “deep concern over the arrest of members of the unarmed political opposition in Chad.” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on February 22 that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Chad, planned for late February, would depend, among other things, on “shedding light on the fate of the disappeared opposition leaders.”