World

Eight suspects went on trial Monday over the July 2016 terror attack in the Mediterranean city of Nice, where an  Islamist extremist killed 86 people by driving a truck into thousands of locals and tourists celebrating France’s national day.

The attacker, a 31-year-old Tunisian named Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was shot and killed by police after a four-minute rampage down the seaside embankment of the Promenade des Anglais.

The seven men and one woman standing trial in Paris are accused of crimes ranging from being aware of his intentions to providing logistical support and supplying weapons.

Only one suspect, Ramzi Kevin Arefa, faces the maximum penalty of life imprisonment if convicted as a repeat offender. The others risk between five and 20 years in prison.

The trial, which is set to last until December 16, is the latest legal process over the wave of Islamist attacks that have struck France since 2015.

On June 29, a Paris court convicted all 20 suspects in the trial over the November 2015 attacks in the French capital that left 130 dead.

The Nice trial will take place at the historic Palais de Justice in Paris, in the same purpose-built courtroom that hosted the November 2015 attacks hearings, and a special venue has also been set up in Nice to allow victims to follow proceedings via a live broadcast.

– ‘Frustration’ –

The trial marks a hugely important moment for survivors and relatives of the victims as they seek to move on with their lives.

“I still feel angry,” said Danielle Lechailler, 73, one of the civil plaintiffs attending the trial opening. “We’ve had six years to confront this but the scar is still there.”

The extremist Islamic State (IS) group rapidly claimed responsibility for the Nice attack, though French investigators ultimately did not find any links between the attacker and the jihadist organisation which at the time controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Of the accused, three suspects are charged with association in a terrorist conspiracy and the five others with association in a criminal conspiracy and violating arms laws.

The attack, which saw 15 children and adolescents among the dead and more than 450 wounded, was the second most deadly postwar atrocity on French soil after the November 2015 Paris attacks.

Six years after the attack, “the fact that the sole perpetrator is not there will create frustration. There will be many questions that no one will be able to answer,” said Eric Morain, a lawyer for a victims’ association that is taking part in the trial.

“We are trying to prepare them for the fact that the sentences may not be commensurate with their suffering,” said Antoine Casubolo-Ferro, another lawyer for the victims.

In the November 2015 attacks trial, just one member of the assault team, Salah Abdeslam, was not killed during or in the wake of the strikes. 

He discarded his suicide belt on the night of the attacks and claimed to have changed his mind about attacking. But he was sentenced to life in prison with only a tiny chance of parole after 30 years, the toughest possible punishment under French law.

French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti commented: “I understand this frustration, it is human. But there will be a legal response. We respond to this barbarism through the law”. 

– ‘Wound will never heal’ –

Of the accused, only seven will appear in court after one suspect, Brahim Tritrou, being tried in absentia, fled judicial supervision to Tunisia where he is now believed to be under arrest.

Just three of the accused are currently under arrest with one held in connection with another case. The defendants are a mix of Tunisians, French-Tunisians and Albanians. 

Some 30,000 people had gathered on the seafront to watch a fireworks display celebrating France’s annual Bastille Day holiday on July 14 when Lahouaiej-Bouhlel began his rampage.

The attack left permanent scars on the city of Nice, a byword for urban seaside glamour on France’s Cote d’Azur but which like the neighbouring Mediterranean cities of Marseille and Toulon has seen rising immigration and social tension.

Nice was struck again in October 2020 when a Tunisian Islamist radical stabbed three people to death at a church.

Nice’s right-wing mayor, Christian Estrosi, said: “This wound will never heal, whatever the outcome of the trial. This wound is too deep.”

According to French and Tunisian press reports, the body of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was repatriated to Tunisia in 2017 and buried in his hometown of M’saken, south of Tunis. This has never been confirmed by the Tunisian authorities.

Kenya’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld William Ruto’s victory in the August 9 presidential election, ending weeks of political uncertainty and delivering a blow to challenger Raila Odinga who had alleged fraud in the poll.

“This is a unanimous decision. The petitions are hereby dismissed, as a consequence we declare the first respondent (Ruto) as president-elect,” Chief Justice Martha Koome said.

Deputy President Ruto, 55, scraped to victory by a margin of less than two percentage points in a tightly-fought race against Odinga, a veteran opposition politician now backed by the ruling party.

As Ruto supporters celebrated, Odinga — who had filed a petition to Kenya’s top court last month — said he respected the ruling but disagreed with its substance.

“We have always stood for the rule of law and the constitution. In this regard, we respect the opinion of the court although we vehemently disagree with their decision today,” he said in a statement.

Although voting day passed off peacefully, the results had sparked angry protests in Odinga strongholds, prompting fears that the disputed outcome could fuel violence in a country with a history of post-poll unrest.

Judges spent the last two weeks sifting through boxes of evidence to establish if any irregularities were substantial enough to nullify the election, as was the case with the August 2017 presidential poll, which Odinga also challenged.

Koome methodically listed the court’s response to the nine issues at the heart of the case.

She said the technology used by the Independent and Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) met the standards of “integrity, verifiability, security and transparency”.

Any “irregularities were not of such magnitude as to affect the final results of the presidential election”, she said, dismissing all the claims made by the petitioners.

Odinga’s 72-page petition alleged hackers broke into IEBC servers and uploaded doctored result forms, but the claim was dismissed by the court. 

– ‘We just want jobs’ – 

In several towns in Kenya, the verdict sparked celebrations among Ruto supporters, who cheered and banged plastic buckets in jubilation.

Elsewhere in Nairobi, stony-faced Odinga supporters expressed their disappointment, with a group of women telling AFP: “Not all of us are happy.”

But with the economy in the doldrums, many Kenyans said they were relieved to see an end to the political drama so business could pick up again.

“This announcement enables us to move on (with our lives)”, said Caroline, a 30-year-old flower seller in the capital.

“We just want jobs,” she told AFP.

Ben Hunter, Africa analyst at risk intelligence group Verisk Maplecroft, said in a note that “any protests by Odinga’s followers… will not translate into prolonged unrest, despite international concerns of widespread violence”.

“The unanimity of the legal ruling and the ongoing economic crisis will dampen the appetite for conflict,” he added.

In Odinga’s stronghold of Kisumu, where protests broke out last month following the results’ announcement, messages calling for peace were plastered on walls and pinned to poles as police patrolled the streets.

“We don’t want trouble because we have realised we are the ones who suffer,” said Nelima Atieno, a seller of second-hand clothes. 

Minibus driver Kevin Omolo echoed her views, telling AFP: “We don’t want people to demonstrate.”

“We can’t change the verdict even though it is painful.”

– Voter disillusionment –

After 2017’s annulment, the IEBC was under heavy pressure to deliver a clean poll.

But this year’s outcome sparked a rift within the IEBC itself, with four of its seven commissioners accusing chairman Wafula Chebukati of running an “opaque” process.

Chebukati denied the allegations, insisting he carried out his duties according to the law of the land despite facing “intimidation and harassment”.

Since 2002, no presidential poll outcome in Kenya has gone uncontested.

At around 65 percent, turnout was sharply lower than in the August 2017 election, with observers saying it reflected growing disillusionment among citizens.

Odinga, who previously said he was cheated of victory in the 2007, 2013 and 2017 polls, had framed the legal battle as a fight “for democracy and good governance”.

Ruto in turn had urged the court to toss out the petition, accusing Odinga of trying “to have another bite at the cherry through a judicially-forced re-run”.

The 2017 poll saw dozens of protesters killed at the hands of police. 

Kenya’s worst electoral violence occurred after the 2007 vote, when more than 1,100 people died in politically motivated clashes involving rival tribes.

Ruto will be sworn in on September 13, becoming Kenya’s fifth president since independence from Britain in 1963 and taking the reins of a country beset by inflation, high unemployment and a crippling drought.

At least 21 people were killed when a strong earthquake struck southwestern China on Monday, state media reported, as violent tremors in a remote region damaged homes and left some areas without electricity.

The magnitude 6.6 quake hit about 43 kilometres (26 miles) southeast of the city of Kangding in Sichuan province at a depth of 10 kilometres, according to the US Geological Survey.

Fourteen people lost their lives in Sichuan’s Shimian county and seven died in nearby Luding county, while more than 30 were injured, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Tremors shook buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu — where millions are confined to their homes under a strict Covid lockdown — and in the nearby megacity of Chongqing, local residents told AFP.

“I felt it quite strongly. Some of my neighbours on the ground floor said they felt it very noticeably,” said Chen, a resident of Chengdu.

“But because Chengdu is currently under epidemic management, people aren’t allowed to leave their residential compounds, so many of them rushed out into their courtyards,” she added.

At least one town had suffered “severe damage” from mountain landslides triggered by the quake, CCTV reported.

A road to another town was blocked and telecommunications lines in areas home to more than 10,000 people were severed, the broadcaster said, adding that shocks also forced some power stations offline in the areas of Garze and Ya’an.

Footage broadcast by CCTV appeared to show damaged buildings and a street strewn with fallen masonry in Garze.

A video posted online by the China Earthquake Networks Center showed boulders thundering down mountainsides in Luding county, kicking up clouds of dust as tremors swayed roadside telephone wires.

State media reported that several aftershocks were recorded in nearby areas. A smaller magnitude 4.6 tremor hit eastern Tibet less than an hour after the initial quake, according to the USGS.

Hundreds of rescue workers were dispatched to the epicentre, CCTV reported, alongside footage of firefighters in orange jumpsuits boarding trucks and navigating a highway littered with rocks and other debris.

The Sichuan seismological authority said more than 1,000 soldiers had been sent to help rescue workers.

Authorities also sent thousands of tents, blankets and foldable beds to the affected areas, according to the broadcaster.

Other state media photos showed officials in military fatigues heaving shovels and other equipment along a highway — all while wearing face masks as a Covid precaution.

President Xi Jinping called for local authorities to “make saving lives the first priority, go all out to rescue people in disaster-stricken areas, and minimise loss of life,” according to CCTV.

A resident of Chongqing said the quake was “pretty noticeable” and that it had shaken the lights and furniture in his fifth-floor apartment.

“I was pretty scared,” he told AFP, “but it didn’t seem to faze people here.”

– Summer of extremes –

Earthquakes are fairly common in China, especially in the country’s seismically active southwest.

A magnitude 8.0 quake in 2008 in Sichuan’s Wenchuan county left tens of thousands dead and caused enormous damage.

At least four people were killed and dozens more injured after two earthquakes in southwestern China in June.

That month a shallow 6.1-magnitude shock hit a sparsely populated area about 100 kilometres west of Chengdu.

It was followed three minutes later by a second quake of magnitude 4.5 in a nearby county, where the deaths and injuries occurred.

Authorities in Chengdu extended the city’s lockdown on Sunday as they fight a Covid flare-up with hundreds of cases.

The region has also suffered a summer of extreme weather, with a record-breaking heatwave noticeably drying rivers in Chongqing.

The European Union signed a deal with war-torn Ukraine on Monday to release a further 500 million euros ($497 million) in planned aid, this time to support housing, education and agriculture.

The European Commission — the EU’s executive arm — announced the package as senior officials hosted a meeting in Brussels of the EU-Ukraine Association Council with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal. 

“This EU grant funding will help ensure housing and education for internally displaced persons and returnees and support Ukraine’s agriculture sector,” spokesman Eric Mamer said.

In addition to the latest slice of aid — part of a larger support programme begun in April — Ukraine will also be able to apply to the EU digital economy fund to develop high-tech training and industry.

Monday’s meeting of the association council will be the first since Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February, was accepted as a formal candidate to join the EU.

The Brussels meeting was being chaired by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and EU enlargement commissioner Oliver Varhelyi, and seek to advance Ukraine’s participation in EU programmes.

Full membership may be years away but the EU and most of its member states are backing Kyiv’s struggle with Moscow by providing weapons, economic aid and sanctions against Russia.

“Among our current priorities is the introduction of a total energy embargo against Russia,” Shmygal said on his Telegram account, as he was welcomed to EU headquarters.

“Ukraine has the largest underground deposits for storing gas and could become Europe’s gas vault,” he said. 

“After obtaining the status of candidate country, the government aspires to accelerate integration into the EU energy market.”

Engineers breached Pakistan’s biggest freshwater lake to drain water threatening nearby towns, officials said Monday, as heavy rain poured misery on millions affected by the country’s worst floods in history.

Nearly a third of Pakistan is under water — an area the size of the United Kingdom — following months of record monsoon rains that have killed 1,300 people and washed away homes, businesses, roads and bridges.

Officials say the repair bill will top $10 billion for a country already in the grip of economic crisis, with hundreds of thousands homeless as the monsoon draws to an end and winter approaches.

“There is nowhere to shower or go to the bathroom,” said Zebunnisa Bibi, sheltering near Fazilpur, in Punjab province, where 65 tents are now home to more than 500 people who fled their inundated villages for higher land. 

Similar tent camps have mushroomed across much of the south and west of Pakistan, where rain has nowhere to drain because rivers are already in full flow as a result of torrential downpours in the north.

Sindh province Information minister Sharjeel Inam Memon told AFP Monday that engineers had to cut a channel into Lake Manchar to drain water that was threatening the towns of Sehwan and Bhan Saeedabad, with a combined population of nearly half a million.

– Lake Manchar bigger than ever –

Still, thousands had to be evacuated from smaller settlements submerged by the newly directed channel.

“The flood water was diverted but the threat is still far from over,” Memon said.

“We are trying our best to stop the inundation of more villages.”

Lake Manchar, which lies west of the Indus River, varies in size according to the season and rainfall, but is currently spread over as wide an area as anyone can recall.

Much of Sindh and parts of Balochistan have become a vast landscape of water, with displaced locals huddled miserably on elevated roads, rail tracks and other high ground.

Human and animal waste in the fetid water attracts swarms of flies, while outbreaks of dengue are being reported from mosquitos breeding in the swamplands.

One pregnant woman at a camp in Punjab said she was desperate for medical attention for a baby due any day now.

The mother-of-five knows it could be a difficult birth, as the baby has not shifted from the breech position.

“I need a doctor or a midwife. What if something happens to my child?” said Fahmidah Bibi.

The United Nations Population Fund said at the weekend there were at least 128,000 pregnant women in flood-hit areas who urgently need care — with 42,000 expected to give birth in the next three months.

– Climate change blamed –

Pakistan receives heavy — often destructive — rains during its annual monsoon season, which are crucial for agriculture and water supplies.

But such intense downpours have not been seen for decades.

Pakistani officials blame climate change, which is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather around the world.

Pakistan is responsible for less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but is eighth on a list compiled by the NGO Germanwatch of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.

A massive army-led relief operation is in full swing, but the country’s leaders have admitted being overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis and appealed for international help.

The latest figures from the National Disaster Management Authority show nearly 6,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) of roads have been washed away, 246 bridges demolished, and 1.6 million homes either destroyed or badly damaged since June, when the monsoon started.

A suicide bomber struck near the Russian embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday, killing two staff from the diplomatic mission and wounding several other people, the foreign ministry in Moscow said.

In the first attack targeting a foreign mission since the Taliban seized power in August last year, the bomber blew himself up near the entrance of the embassy’s consular section.

“As a result of the attack, two employees of the diplomatic mission were killed, and there are also Afghan citizens among the wounded,” the Russian foreign ministry said. 

Afghan interior ministry spokesman Abdul Nafy Takor gave AFP a different account, saying a suicide attacker was shot dead by Taliban guards at the Russian embassy.

An Afghan civilian was killed and several others wounded, he said.

As with other recent attacks, heavy Taliban security quickly sealed off the area and prevented media from filming nearby.

No group has so far claimed the attack on the embassy. 

“Without any doubt, we are talking about a terrorist act, which is absolutely unacceptable,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in Moscow.

Violence in Afghanistan has largely declined since the Taliban returned to power, but several bomb blasts — some targeting minority communities — have rocked the country in recent months, many claimed by the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group.

Last week, a suicide bomber struck one of western Afghanistan’s biggest mosques, killing at least 18 people, including an influential imam.

Cleric Mujib ur Rahman Ansari, who had called for those who committed even the “smallest act” against the government to be beheaded, was killed in that attack in the city of Herat.

Ansari was the second pro-Taliban cleric to be killed in a blast in less than a month, after an August 11 suicide attack targeted Rahimullah Haqqani at his madrassa in Kabul.

Several mosques across the country have been targeted this year, some in attacks claimed by IS.

At least 21 people were killed and dozens more wounded on August 17 when a blast ripped through a mosque packed with worshippers in Kabul.

IS has primarily targeted minority communities such as Shiites, Sufis and Sikhs.

While IS is a Sunni Islamist group like the Taliban, the two are bitter rivals and greatly diverge on ideological grounds.

Taliban officials claim that IS has been defeated but experts say the group is the main security challenge for the country’s current Islamist rulers.

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