World

Tigrayan fighters deliberately killed civilians and gang-raped dozens of women and underage girls in two towns in Ethiopia’s Amhara region last year, Amnesty International said on Wednesday, the latest example of the horrific toll exacted by the 15-month war.

The rights watchdog interviewed 30 rape survivors — some as young as 14 — and other victims of violence to draw a picture of the atrocities in Chenna and Kobo in August and September after rebels from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) seized control of the towns.

Nearly half the victims of sexual violence said they were gang-raped, with doctors telling Amnesty that some survivors had suffered lacerations likely caused by rifle bayonets being inserted into their genitals.

A 14-year-old schoolgirl told the rights group she and her mother were both raped by TPLF fighters who said the attacks were in revenge for atrocities committed against their own families.

“One of them raped me in the courtyard and the other raped my mother inside the house,” she said.

“My mother is very sick now, she is very depressed and desperate. We don’t speak about what happened; it is impossible.”

The investigation follows the publication of an Amnesty report in November which documented sexual assaults by Tigrayan rebels in the Amhara town of Nifas Mewcha.

“Evidence is mounting of a pattern of Tigrayan forces committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in areas under their control in the Amhara region from July 2021 onwards. 

“This includes repeated incidents of widespread rape, summary killings and looting, including from hospitals,” Amnesty’s deputy director for East Africa, Sarah Jackson, said.

– Revenge killings –

Residents of Kobo said TPLF fighters shot dead unarmed civilians, apparently in a revenge killing spree after facing resistance to their advance by Amhara militias.

“The first dead bodies we saw were by the school fence. There were 20 bodies lying in their underwear and facing the fence and three more bodies in the school compound. Most were shot at the back of their heads and some in the back.

“Those who were shot at the back of their heads could not be recognised because their faces were partially blown off,” one male resident said.

The watchdog said its satellite imagery analysis revealed the existence of the new burial sites referred to by the villagers.

The TPLF did not respond to the latest allegations, Amnesty said. But the rebel group has previously criticised the watchdog over its earlier report on alleged atrocities in Nifas Mewcha, saying it would conduct its own probe and bring perpetrators to justice.

The war in northern Ethiopia has been punctuated by accounts of massacres and mass rapes, with thousands of people killed and hundreds of thousands on the brink of starvation.

Amnesty has previously documented the rape of hundreds of women and girls by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers in Tigray.

A joint investigation by UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s office and the government-affiliated Ethiopian Human Rights Commission published last November found evidence of “serious abuses” by all sides, saying that some violations may amount to crimes against humanity.

The United States called Tuesday for verifiable proof of Russian claims that it was pulling back some of the troops deployed on its borders with Ukraine.

In the first announced withdrawal from among more than 100,000 troops Russia massed on the Ukrainian border, the defence ministry in Moscow said some soldiers and hardware were returning to bases at the end of planned exercises.

Western leaders have accused Moscow of positioning the troops in advance of a possible invasion of pro-Western Ukraine, warning that any attack would be met with severe economic sanctions.

After a meeting Tuesday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin said Russia “of course” did not want war, and was willing to look for solutions with the West.

“We are ready to work further together. We are ready to go down the negotiations track,” Putin told a joint press conference with Scholz, confirming a “partial pullback of troops”.

In response, Scholz said: “That we are now hearing that some troops are being withdrawn is in any case a good sign.”

“For Europeans it is clear that lasting security cannot be achieved against Russia but only with Russia.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov Tuesday that Washington wanted to see proof of the withdrawals.

In their phone call, Blinken “emphasized the need to see verifiable, credible, meaningful de-escalation,” the State Department said in a statement.

Lavrov stressed the need to continue “joint work” and called for “pragmatic dialogue,” his ministry said. 

– ‘Reason for hope’ –

Moscow released few details about the troop withdrawal and there was no immediate outside confirmation.

In Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said while there was not yet “any sign of de-escalation on the ground” there were “grounds for cautious optimism”.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said “every real step of de-escalation would be a reason for hope”.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there were “signs of a diplomatic opening” with Russia, but that the intelligence on a possible invasion was “still not encouraging”.

The crisis — the worst between Russia and the West since the Cold War ended — reached a peak this week, with US officials warning that a full-scale invasion, including an assault on Kyiv, was possible within days.

Washington took the dramatic step on Monday of relocating its embassy in Kyiv to the western city of Lviv, having already urged US citizens to leave Ukraine.

The Russian defence ministry announced the partial withdrawal on Tuesday morning, saying some forces deployed near Ukraine had finished their exercises and were packing up to leave.

But the extent of the pullback and the numbers involved were not immediately clear.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the pullback was the “usual process” after military exercises and blamed the West for the crisis.

“This is nothing but a totally unprecedented campaign to provoke tensions,” he said, calling decisions to move embassies to western Ukraine “ostentatious hysteria”.

– ‘Believe what you see’ –

Ukraine said deterrence efforts against Russia appeared to be working but that it would watch to see if any Russian withdrawal was real.

“We have a rule: don’t believe what you hear, believe what you see,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters. “When we see a withdrawal, we will believe in a de-escalation.”

French President Emmanuel Macron and American counterpart Joe Biden also agreed Tuesday on the need to verify the Russian claims, during a one-hour phone conversation, the French presidency said.

On Tuesday evening, Ukraine said that the sites of the country’s defence ministry and armed forces as well as two banks had been hit by a cyberattack that could have Russian origins.

“It cannot be excluded that the aggressor is resorting to dirty tricks,” Ukraine’s communications watchdog said in reference to Russia.

In a separate move likely to anger Kyiv, Russian lawmakers on Tuesday voted to urge Putin to recognise two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as “sovereign and independent states”.

This would allow Russia to abandon the Minsk agreements peace plan for eastern Ukraine and potentially move in Russian troops — giving Putin a strong hand to play in any future negotiations with Kyiv.

The European Union “strongly” condemned such a move, saying it would violate the Minsk agreements that Moscow had signed up to.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian it would amount to “an attack without weapons” on the “unity and integrity of Ukraine”.

Russia has repeatedly blamed the Ukraine crisis on the West, saying the United States and western Europe are ignoring Russia’s legitimate security concerns.

The Kremlin insists NATO must give assurances that Ukraine will never be admitted as a member and roll back its presence in several eastern European and ex-Soviet countries. 

Russia already controls the Crimean Peninsula that it seized from Ukraine in 2014 and supports separatist forces who have taken control of parts of eastern Ukraine, in a conflict that has claimed more than 14,000 lives.

Ukraine said on Tuesday that the websites of the country’s defence ministry and armed forces as well as two state banks had been hit by a cyberattack of possibly Russian origin.

The announcement from Ukraine’s communications watchdog comes with the former Soviet republic fearing a possible invasion from Russian forces conducting massive military drills at its frontiers.

The affected sites included the Oschadbank state savings bank and Privat — two of the country’s largest financial institutions.

Both resumed service later on Tuesday but the military sites remained inaccessible hours after the initial reports of the attack emerged.

The defence ministry site showed an error message saying it was “undergoing technical maintenance”.

The armed forces website showed a message saying it could not be reached.

“It cannot be excluded that the aggressor is resorting to dirty tricks,” the watchdog said in reference to Russia.

Tuesday’s cyberattack came one month after another strike briefly took down key government websites.

NATO responded within hours of the January attack by announcing a cyber warfare cooperation deal with Kyiv. The European Union also said it was mobilising “all its resources” to help Ukraine at the time.

The deals were designed to help protect Ukraine from Russian state actors and private proxies committing cyber crimes on the Kremlin’s behalf.

Kyiv said the damage in January had been limited and held back on apportioning blame.

Tuesday’s attack came the same day that Russia announced it was pulling back some of the troops deployed on Ukraine’s borders in Moscow’s standoff with the West over NATO’s presence in eastern Europe.

Prince Andrew and his longtime accuser Virginia Giuffre have settled a sexual assault lawsuit for an undisclosed sum, according to a US court filing Tuesday, sparing the disgraced British royal the public humiliation of a trial.

In a letter sent to a New York judge on behalf of both parties, Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies wrote that they “have reached an out of court settlement,” without revealing the financial terms.

As part of the agreement, the British royal will make a “substantial donation” to a charity established by Giuffre that supports sex trafficking victims, Boies said.

Giuffre has said she had sex with Andrew when she was 17 and a minor under US law after meeting him through the late US financier Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in prison while awaiting trial for sex crimes.

The prince has not been criminally charged and has denied the allegations.

The settlement means the civil case will not go to a jury trial. It also means Andrew, 61, will no longer be questioned under oath by Giuffre’s lawyers, who had been due to travel to London next month.

Boies said the respective parties would file a stipulation dismissing the case within 30 days. 

“The parties will file a stipulated dismissal upon Ms. Giuffre’s receipt of the settlement (the sum of which is not being disclosed),” he said in the document filed in a Manhattan court.

The letter makes no mention of Giuffre’s accusations. Neither does it admit any guilt on behalf of Andrew or reference the repeated denials he has made.

“Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks,” the letter said.

“It is known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over many years. Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others.

“He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims,” it added.

Last month Andrew was stripped of his honorary military titles and charitable roles after New York Judge Lewis Kaplan denied his plea to dismiss Giuffre’s case.

The controversy has embarrassed the British monarchy and overshadowed Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee year in which she marks 70 years on the throne.

– Private island –

Giuffre, who is now 38, alleged that Andrew sexually assaulted her at the London home of socialite and Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell after a night out dancing in March 2001.

She sued the prince last year for unspecified damages, alleging that she was trafficked to him by Epstein and Maxwell.

In December, Maxwell was convicted of recruiting and grooming young girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, exposing a murky world of sex trafficking among the rich and powerful.

As well as the London allegations, Giuffre also said Andrew assaulted her at Epstein’s home in New York, and on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.

Epstein, 66, was a high-profile financier who befriended countless celebrities. 

His death in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 was ruled a suicide by New York’s chief medical examiner but sparked conspiracy theories that he had been killed to protect wealthy associates.

Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, withdrew from public life as a royal in 2019 after a widely ridiculed BBC interview where he defended his relationship with Epstein and sought to vindicate himself of Giuffre’s accusation.

Giuffre filed her lawsuit in August under New York’s Child Victims’ Act which allowed victims to sue alleged abusers irrespective of the age of the claims.

The conciliatory language in Tuesday’s statement was in stark contrast to October when Andrew’s lawyers accused Giuffre of seeking to profit from a “baseless lawsuit.”

A spokesperson for Andrew said he would not be commenting beyond the court documents.

At least seven fishermen died and another 14 were missing after a Spanish trawler sank in rough seas off eastern Canada on Tuesday, Spanish and Canadian officials said. 

“We have now recovered seven deceased individuals and three survivors,” Brian Owens of Canada’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) told AFP. 

There were 24 crew members on board the vessel when it went down some 250 nautical miles east of Newfoundland, with rescuers still searching for the remaining 14 crew despite difficult weather conditions, he said.

Spain’s transport ministry identified the crew members as 16 Spanish nationals, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians. 

“Seven people have been found dead… three sailors were found alive in a life raft, we believe they are recovering, and the rest — up to 24 — have not been found,” Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of Spain’s northwestern Galicia region, told RTVE public television.

The Villa de Pitanxo, a 50-metre (165-foot) fishing vessel which is based at a port in Galicia, sent out two distress calls which were received at 5:24 am (0424 GMT) in Madrid, the ministry said. 

Five hours later, another Spanish fishing vessel that was in the area spotted two life rafts, one of which was carrying three survivors and several bodies, it said. 

Rescuers later found another four bodies. 

“In one, there were just three survivors who were in a state of hypothermic shock because the temperature of the water is horrible, very low,” Maica Larriba, a representative of Spain’s central government in the Galicia region, told public radio. 

She said the survivors had been airlifted to safety by a Canadian coastguard helicopter and that rescuers had found two other life rafts that were “totally empty” while searching for a third. 

Canadian rescuers said they were hopeful more survivors could be found. 

“The fact that we have already found three survivors in a life raft gives us that hope that others were able to either get into their survival suits, get into life rafts and get off the vessel,” Owens of the JRCC told AFP.

Canadian rescuers had deployed a helicopter, a military plane, a coastguard ship and several boats to search for the missing crew members, he said.

“The weather right now is challenging for the search. It’s approximately four-metre (13 foot) waves and visibility is down to approximately one quarter nautical mile,” he said. 

It was not immediately clear what caused the boat to founder. 

– ‘Saddest day’ – 

“We certainly could be talking about one of the saddest days for Galician fishing in its entire history,” Javier Touza, head of the Shipowner’s Cooperative in the northwestern Spanish city of Vigo told public radio. 

The Villa de Pitanxo is a freezer trawler registered in 2004 that is based in Marin, a small port near Pontevedra, and belongs to shipowner Manuel Nores.

Founded in 1950, the firm has eight freezer trawlers and some 300 employees with vessels operating off the Canadian coast, in the South Atlantic and off the western coast of Africa, according to its website. 

“We are following with concern the search and rescue operation for the crew of the Galician ship that sunk in the waters of Newfoundland,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted.

“All my love to their families. The government remains in constant contact with rescue services,” he added.

Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz, who is from Galicia, said she was “shocked” by the news of the accident.

“Bad news is reaching us from the other side of the Atlantic,” she tweeted.

“All my love and support to the families of the crew in their pain at this time of uncertainty.”

White, glistening and six metres long: the table chosen for Vladimir Putin’s meeting with world leaders has sparked a flurry of memes — and a slew of speculation about its symbolism. 

The stretching table has featured in photographs splashed across the internet in recent days, as the Russian president sits with Western leaders eager to defuse tensions over a feared Ukrainian invasion. 

He sat across from French President Emmanuel Macron at the now-famous table last week, and on Tuesday sat at the same table with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. 

Officially, the six-metre (20-foot) long lacquered wood table is being used as a coronavirus protocol — to ensure ample distance between Putin and his guests. 

But analysts say its symbolism speaks volumes, showing Putin as a distant, isolated figure.

“It is obvious that he is more and more alone,” independent political analyst Konstantin Kalachev told AFP. 

“This loneliness is obvious, it seems he no longer cares what other people think of him.”

Western nations have sounded the alarm in recent weeks of an imminent Russian invasion on Ukraine, prompting a flurry of shuttle diplomacy from diplomats and leaders eager to ease tensions. 

Putin has denied plans to invade, but has demanded security guarantees from Washington and its allies.

– ‘Nothing terrible here’ – 

It is not the only long table preferred by Putin.

The 69-year-old Russian leader, famously cautious about coronavirus, has also been pictured sitting at a long rectangular one for meetings with his advisors.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu were forced to sit several metres away from Putin as they delivered reports on Ukraine. 

Asked about these distancing measures, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday they were “temporary”. 

He said they were in place to avoid the highly-contagious and often asymptomatic Omicron variant.

“There is nothing terrible or special here. We are going through times that dictate special measures,” Peskov told reporters.

Extraordinary steps have been taken to protect Putin, who for over a year has been living in a strictly-controlled virus-free bubble.

Foreign leaders, journalists and officials were required to self-isolate in advance of being in contact with Putin and a disinfection tunnel was installed at his residence outside Moscow. 

Members of foreign delegations and journalists wishing to go to the Kremlin must provide three negative PCR tests in the four days leading up to their visit. 

And visiting leaders who want a face-to-face meeting with Putin must agree to a Kremlin-administered swab or settle for the far end of the table. 

Both Macron and Scholz declined the Kremlin test, opting instead to get one from their own medics. 

– The Last Supper? –

Adding to the pomp of the long, white table is the decor — thick, draped gold curtains on large light-coloured rug in a Kremlin reception room. 

A small bouquet of flowers sits in the middle, exaggerating the table’s largesse. 

The images have spawned widely-circulated memes online, one making the table look like a skating rink and another of the Last Supper. 

One features Putin looking across the table for an eye exam. 

Netizens have been quick to pounce on the images, dishing up humorous comments on social media despite the backdrop of crisis. 

Some jokes suggested that Ikea name one of their long tables after Putin. 

According to Kalachev, Putin “risks looking ridiculous” and seeing his image suffer. 

Even Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, a European ally of Putin who was hosted in the Kremlin in early February, “joked that he had never seen such a long table”, Kalachev added. 

On the other hand, Kalachev said, these images “should please everyone”.

“It is unlikely that a person paying so much attention to his health will start World War III.”

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Families of nine victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting have reached a $73 million settlement with US gunmaker Remington, in a landmark deal for a country plagued by campus massacres.

Twenty-six children and teachers were shot dead at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza.

A “settlement agreement has been executed between the parties,” a notice from lawyers for the families said Tuesday.

Lanza was a 20-year-old with known developmental disabilities who lived at home with his mother when he carried out the attack.

His mother, a gun enthusiast, had bought him a AR-15-style Bushmaster XM15-E2S semi-automatic rifle more than two years before the shooting. Lanza murdered his mother before attacking the school, and killed himself afterward.

The lawsuit had alleged that Remington and the other two defendants are culpable because they knowingly marketed a military grade weapon that is “grossly unsuited” for civilian use yet had become the gun most used in mass shootings.

Remington, the oldest gunmaker in the United States and which has since filed for bankruptcy, had denied the allegations.

The plaintiffs alleged that the gun was marketed immorally and unscrupulously, sold on its war-fighting capabilities to civilians.

Marketing, they alleged, popularized the AR-15 in combat and mass shooting-type situations through the type of violent video games that Lanza was known to play.

They specifically cited Remington’s marketing of high-capacity magazines, which have only combat utility, for use with the gun.

“When it came to the military looking for the best weapon, the most lethal weapon, the most destructive weapon and the weapon that could provide our soldiers… they chose the AR-15,” Joshua Koskoff, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, told a press conference Tuesday.

The same gun, he said, “was used not by a highly-trained soldier but by a deeply troubled kid, not on a battlefield abroad but in an elementary school at home, and not to preserve freedom, but to eviscerate them.”

AFP has sought comment from both Remington and the plaintiff’s lawyers.

– Popular in mass shootings –

An AR-15 was also used to kill 58 people at a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, and 17 as a school in Parkland, Florida in 2018. 

When the lawsuit by the Sandy Hook families was first filed, a lower court in Connecticut has rejected it.

But the state Supreme Court overruled that judgement.

It said that, even though the US Congress passed a law in 2005 that explicitly immunized gunmakers when their products are used in crimes, Remington could still be sued on the grounds that its marketing violated Connecticut’s unfair trade practice laws.

Nicole Hockley, the mother of victim Dylan, six, told a press conference that her family had moved from Britain “because of our belief in the American dream.”

But that “turned into the American nightmare, where for too many the right to bear arms is a higher priority than the right to life.”

“Nothing will bring Dylan back,” she said. “The closest I get to him now is by kissing his urn every night, telling him I love him and I miss him.”

Last year a US judge ruled in favor of parents who sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for saying that the massacre at the school was a hoax.

In the shooting, 20 six- and seven-year-old children and six staff members were killed.

France’s top court on Tuesday confirmed that a probe should be closed into the shooting down of a presidential plane that triggered the 1994 Rwanda genocide, ending a two-decade legal saga.

The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal by families of people killed in the missile attack on president Juvenal Habyarimana’s aircraft on April 6, 1994.

They had asked judges to reverse a lower court’s decision to abandon the case against people close to current President Paul Kagame.

Relations between Paris and Kigali had long been strained by the probe and its associated arrest warrants.

“The investigation was complete and sufficient charges did not exist against anyone for committing the alleged crimes, nor any other infraction,” the Court of Cassation found.

“Of course this decision disappoints the Rwandan plaintiffs, but in reality the harm has long since been done,” said Philippe Meilhac, a lawyer for Habyarimana’s widow Agathe.

Defence lawyers Leon-Lef Forster and Bernard Maingain called the decision “a clear legal victory for the Rwandan soldiers unjustly accused” by a French judge in 2006, claiming that the probe “had a distinct whiff of politics” about it.

“The defence hopes that the battle fought on the legal front will also help do justice to the one million victims of the genocide against the Tutsi,” they added.

The Falcon 50 plane was carrying Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira from a summit in Tanzania, where they had been discussing the crisis in the two countries and continuing negotiations with Kagame, then leader of the mostly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) rebel group.

Its downing is widely seen as the spark that ignited the genocide in which more than 800,000 people are believed to have died — most from the Tutsi minority at the hands of Hutus.

Rwanda’s representative at the UN said at the time that the plane was shot down by “enemies of the peace,” while the defence ministry said “unidentified elements” were responsible.

Relatives of the French flight crew turned to the courts in 1998.

French investigators long suspected that Kagame’s rebels fired on the flight as it landed in the Rwandan capital.

Later they chased up the theory that Hutu extremists unsatisfied with the moderate Habyarimana were behind the attack, with no more success.

But a French expert report found in 2012 that the plane was hit by missiles fired from a camp occupied by Habyarimana’s own presidential guard.

Defending their dropping of the case in December 2018, the investigating magistrates said there was a “lack of indisputable material evidence,” and this left the charges resting on witness accounts that were “mostly contradictory or impossible to verify.”

They also underlined the “detrimental atmosphere” around the case, including killings, disappearances of witnesses and manipulation of testimony.