A Trail of Bullet Casings Leads From Africa’s Wars Back to Iran
By C. J. CHIVERS
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: January 11, 2013
The first clues appeared in Kenya, Uganda and what is now South Sudan. A British arms researcher surveying ammunition used by government forces and civilian militias in 2006 found Kalashnikov rifle cartridges he had not seen before. The ammunition bore no factory code, suggesting that its manufacturer hoped to avoid detection.
Within two years other researchers were finding identical cartridges circulating through the ethnic violence in Darfur. Similar ammunition then turned up in 2009 in a stadium in Conakry, Guinea, where soldiers had fired on antigovernment protesters, killing more than 150.
For six years, a group of independent arms-trafficking researchers worked to pin down the source of the mystery cartridges. Exchanging information from four continents, they concluded that someone had been quietly funneling rifle and machine-gun ammunition into regions of protracted conflict, and had managed to elude exposure for years. Their only goal was to solve the mystery, not implicate any specific nation.
A mother's story of the teenager India wants to hang after gang-rape that shocked a nation
To India he’s a monster, the juvenile who committed a horrific crime. But to his mother he’s still Bhura, the boy she was forced to abandon at 11 years old
His mother lies shrunken and despairing, shrouded in blankets on a straw mattress. For her, the young man who went by the nick-name “Bhura”, or “brown”, was her first-born joy, a flash of happiness in a hard-edged world until she was forced to send him away to work in Delhi at the age of 11. For several years afterwards she had no idea he was alive or dead.
But to the world, gripped by the recent rape and murder of a Delhi student, the 17-year-old bus attendant from Uttar Pradesh represents little less than the essence of evil. In briefings to the media, police have suggested this teenager was among the most savage of the six attackers, luring the student and her male companion aboard a bus with his “sing-song” call before twice raping her and internally assaulting her with an iron bar.
AFRICA
France helps Mali push back rebels and recapture
Konna
With French support, the Malian army has retaken the town of Konna, which rebels had secured days earlier. France has begun an intervention in Mali to help counter a push by Islamist rebels.
Malian government forces have pushed back Islamist rebels from the central town of Konna following air strikes by the French military, who began an intervention on Friday.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed France had carried out air strikes against the rebels but refused to reveal further details.
"The Malian army has retaken Konna with the help of our military partners. We are there now," Lieutenant Colonel Diaran Kone told the Reuters news agency.
irishtimes.com - Last Updated: Saturday, January 12, 2013, 07:44
Loyalist protesters cause major disruption in North
Police also came under attack from protesters hurling petrol bombs and other missiles during the orchestrated demonstrations which were dubbed Operation Standstill.One of the officers required hospital treatment.
The most serious disorder was witnessed in Carrickfergus and the Rathcoole area of Newtownabbey, both on the northern outskirts of Belfast.
Police were attacked with 33 petrol bombs, as well as masonry and other missiles. Vehicles were set on fire.
Officers fired five baton rounds and deployed water cannon to restore calm. Two arrests were made.
Most Belfast local bus services apart from the Falls Road service were suspended, while people trying to get to a Heineken Cup game between Ulster and Glasgow at Ravenhill suffered delays and parking difficulties.
Notorious Somali pirate king-pin retires
One of Somalia's most notorious pirate leaders who terrorised vast areas of the Indian Ocean, generating multi-million dollar ransoms from the ships he seized, has announced his retirement.
"After being in piracy for eight years, I have decided to renounce and quit, and from today on I will not be involved in this gang activity," Mohamed Abdi Hassan, known as "Afweyne" or "big mouth", told reporters late Wednesday.
Last year he was described as "one of the most notorious and influential leaders" in Somalia's pirate-hub region of Hobyo, in a report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea.
His men were reportedly involved in the 2009 capture of the MV Faina, a Ukrainian transport ship carrying 33 refurbished Soviet-era T-72 battle tanks, and which was released after a 134-hijack for a reported three million dollars.
'We are millions': Victims of organized crime in Mexico seek justice in new law
In a country where fewer than 4 percent of crimes are ever solved, the so-called 'victims law' will provide financial reparations and additional legal protection.
By Lauren Villagran, Correspondent / January 11, 2013
Rocío Uribe Ruiz stood at the back of a conference room in the Mexican presidential residence, silently holding a picture of her missing daughter, as President Enrique Peña Nieto touted a new law to protect victims of the country's devastating organized crime epidemic.
With more than 60,000 people killed in drug violence in the past six years, and tens of thousands more disappeared, Mexico now faces the monumental task of addressing the needs of the growing group of those affected. The new legislation, signed into law this week, promises to do just that. For the first time, Mexico will specifically address victims' rights with additional legal protection and financial reparations, among other benefits.
Dozens of relatives whose loved ones have disappeared without a trace — and whose cases have gone nowhere in a country where fewer than 4 percent of crimes are ever solved — squeezed into the packed Los Pinos hall as Mr. Peña Nieto announced that with the law, only the second of its kind in Latin America, “the Mexican state aspires to return hope and comfort to victims and their families.”
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