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AFP

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NAIROBI, KEN: Praise poured in Saturday for Kenya’s judiciary after a historic ruling annulling presidential poll results, as attention turned to how discredited officials will organize a new vote in only two months.
Kenya’s press and diplomats hailed the Supreme Court decision to annul last month’s presidential poll as a hard-fought victory for the rule of law, and sign of a maturing democracy.
Pointing to widespread irregularities in the electronic transmission of vote results, Chief Justice David Maraga on Friday declared President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory “invalid, null and void.”
He called for a new election by October 31 in an unexpected ruling in favor of veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga that stunned the nation.
An editorial in the Nation newspaper said the ruling “signalled the end of the era of impunity that has painfully assailed this country for too long.”
“Kenyans have struggled for decades to institutionalize the rule of law. We have fought, shed blood, lost lives and property in search of constitutional order,” the paper said.
“Intrinsic in this is the desire to establish independent institutions that provide checks and balances against each other.”
Writing in the Star, the president of the Law Society of Kenya Isaac Okero said every election except that in 2002 had been plagued by “complaints, irregularities, suspicion of impropriety” that no court had been willing to properly tackle.
The paper’s editorial said the decision “will reverberate for years to come in Kenya and around the continent.”
A joint statement by ambassadors to Kenya praised “Kenya’s resilient democracy and commitment to the rule of law.”
The diplomats urged institutions to work to make the new election fair and credible, adding that “all electoral processes can be improved.”
It is the first time a presidential election result has been overturned in Africa. Similar court rulings have been seen in Austria, Haiti, Ukraine, Serbia and the Maldives.
The press also raised prickly questions about the weeks to come.
Odinga has declared the loss of all confidence in the electoral commission (IEBC), and demanded its commissioners resign.
“How it will conduct the next elections in the next 60 days in unimaginable,” said the Nation.
“Already the NASA (opposition) leadership has declared war on the commission and with or without that, its credibility has been severely dented and the public has lost confidence in it.”
The Standard said the IEBC must “clean up house.”
“What Kenya needs most now is an election conducted in a legal, fair and transparent manner.”
The opposition National Super Alliance (NASA) cried foul after the August 8 poll over alleged hacking of the electronic system transmitting results from over 40,000 polling stations to the national tallying center.
NASA argued that tallying forms meant to back up the electronic result were riddled with irregularities, were unsigned, not stamped, illegible or lacking serial numbers or watermarks.
While Maraga cited “irregularities and illegalities” in the transmission of results, his full ruling has not yet been published.
Kenyatta initially said he “respects” the court decision even though he disagreed with it, however later, in off-the-cuff remarks to his supporters, he slammed the court judges as “crooks” who had been paid off by foreigners.
This after weeks of encouraging the opposition to turn to the judiciary over any complaints and accept the outcome.
Observers have warned that the new election could bring even more tension to a country where politics is largely divided along tribal lines.
“Kenya just had a difficult and controversial election, and this decision pushes it right back into another electoral campaign,” said analyst Nic Cheeseman of the University of Birmingham.
“The outcome of the next election may be controversial again.”
The Nation newspaper warned that there was still a long road ahead: “This is not the end. The toughest journey, campaigns and elections, is yet to begin.”

AP

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McLEAN, USA: An ex-convict arrested Thursday on a gun charge became a supporter of the Daesh group radicalized during his incarceration and wanted to join the organization overseas, according to an FBI affidavit.
Twenty-eight-year-old Casey Spain’s support of the Daesh group was such that he had the Daesh flag tattooed on his back, to go along with the “Cop Killa” tattoo he already had on his right cheek, according to the affidavit from FBI agent Heather Brown.
The charges announced Thursday in federal court in Richmond, though, do not include any terror-related counts. Instead, he is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.
According to Brown’s affidavit, undercover informants who were incarcerated with Spain reported that he pledged allegiance to Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. The informants also reported that Spain wanted to travel overseas to engage in violent jihad on behalf of the Daesh. If he couldn’t travel overseas, he was willing to commit violent acts inside the United States, according to the informants.
As a result, the FBI kept him under surveillance after his release from prison earlier this month, after he served a seven-year sentence for abduction with intent to defile.
Undercover informants who met Spain after his release said he frequently expressed his desire to travel overseas to join the Daesh, as well as a desire to obtain a gun.
He was arrested Thursday after prosecutors say he tried to buy a gun in an FBI sting. The affidavit indicates authorities moved quickly to initiate a sting after learning that Spain might be attempting to buy a gun on his own, and had told an undercover informant he would be willing to shoot and kill any officers who came to arrest him.
According to the affidavit, Spain met with an undercover FBI informant Thursday morning at his home outside Richmond. When Spain took possession of the weapon, which had been rendered inert, a SWAT team moved in to arrest him, according to the affidavit.
Spain ran and jumped a fence in an effort to evade arrest before being chased down and taken into custody, according to the affidavit.
Spain made an initial appearance Thursday afternoon at the Richmond federal courthouse. It was not immediately clear if a lawyer was appointed to represent him.
Since 2014, more than 130 people have been charged in the US with crimes related to the Daesh, according to the George Washington University Project on Extremism. But the number of Daesh-related cases has dropped dramatically in recent months. In a speech this week, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the number of Americans trying to travel to join the Daesh has slowed from six to ten per month two years ago, to maybe one a month now.

AP

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LOS ANGELES: Motel 6 has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Los Angeles that alleged one of the chain’s locations was a base for human traffickers, drug dealers and gang members, prosecutors said.
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the money will be used to help deter human trafficking.
The city in November sued the managers of a motel in the city’s Sylmar neighborhood and G6 Hospitality Property LLC, which operates the Motel 6 chain, seeking to quell what city officials called “unrelenting crime and nuisance activity.”
Los Angeles police had made more than 60 arrests at the location since 2013 for prostitution, battery, firearms possession and drug-related charges, authorities said.
“We allege this has been used as a base for which known gang members and drug dealers had operated,” Feuer said. “We allege that there was prostitution happening at this site — pimps and prostitutes both — and we allege it was a base for stolen goods, for distributing drugs like meth and cocaine and heroin.”
Raiza Rehkoff, a spokeswoman for G6 Hospitality, did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment on the settlement.
In one case, staff members “didn’t hesitate” to rent a room to an undercover police officer who had been posing as a pimp and told the workers that he intended for another undercover officer to work as a prostitute there, the lawsuit alleged.
In another incident, three undercover police officers were approached at the motel’s pool by a suspected gang member who propositioned them to work as prostitutes, offered to act as their pimp and said he would post ads on a website in exchange for half of the proceeds, Feuer said.
A loaded handgun was found hidden in a box-spring under a mattress, and police had arrested suspects in several different robberies at the motel, the city attorney said.
“Our settlement commits Motel 6 to comprehensive, concrete action that’s focused on security at the site and strong management at the site,” Feuer said.
As part of the settlement agreement, the motel will require guests to provide valid photo identification, hire security guards and post signs in the lobby about human trafficking.
The motel also will give Los Angeles police access to its guest list and visitor logs, as well as give officers access to remotely monitor the motel’s security cameras.

AFP

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YANGON, Myanmar: The World Food Programme has suspended food aid in Myanmar’s violence-scorched Rakhine State, as the humanitarian situation deteriorates with a surging death toll and tens of thousands — both Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Buddhists — on the move.
Relief agencies, including WFP, have repeatedly been accused by Myanmar authorities of allowing their rations to fall into the hands of Rohingya militants, whose attacks on police posts on August 25 sparked the current violence.
Around 120,000 people — most of them Rohingya Muslim civilians — have relied on aid hand-outs in camps since 2012, when religious riots killed scores and sparked a crisis which is again burning through the state.
Over the last five years Rakhine state has been cut along ethnic and religious lines, but the current violence is the worst yet.
Aid agencies are routinely accused of a pro-Rohingya bias and the sudden flare-up of unrest has renewed safety concerns, prompting relief work to be pulled back.
“All WFP food assistance operations in Rakhine State have been suspended due to insecurity… affecting 250,000 internally displaced and other most vulnerable populations,” the WFP said in statement.
“We are coordinating with the authorities to resume distributions for all affected communities as soon as possible, including for any people newly affected by the current unrest.”
The Rohingya, branded illegal immigrants in Myanmar and mostly denied citizenship, make up the vast majority of the dead and displaced since 2012.
In the ongoing bout of violence, 40,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, according to the UN.
Tens of thousands have been turned away by Bangladeshi border officials, while scores have died trying to cross the Naf river — a natural frontier between the two countries — in basic boats and even on flotsam.
On Friday, Myanmar’s army chief said nearly 400 people have died in the violence, among them 370 Rohingya militants, and 11,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, Hindus and other minority groups have also been internally displaced.
Accounts from Rohingya survivors in Bangladesh and Buddhists who fled to Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital, indicate the death toll may be much higher.
The worst-hit areas are off-limits to reporters. But unverifiable testimony has trickled out, telling of tit-for-tat mass killings and villages being torched by the army and the militants.
As violence spins out of control, food and medical relief have been stopped to many already languishing in basic camps, according to the Pierre Peron, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“Humanitarian aid normally goes to these vulnerable people for a very good reason, because they depend on it,” he said in a statement, adding disruption to the relief chain “has a very real human impact.”
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres on Friday warned the spiral of violence could lead to a “humanitarian catastrophe” and urged Myanmar’s government to provide security for aid agencies to reach those in need.
Shortly before his comments, aid groups were again spotlighted by army chief Min Aung Hlaing, whose office said WFP-labelled food and medicines had been found with dead militants.
The militants are fighting under the banner of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), who say they are defending their minority group from persecution by Myanmar.
The ARSA emerged as a force in October last year when their attacks killed Myanmar border police, prompting a crackdown by security forces which the UN says may have amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Reuters

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COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh: More than 2,600 houses have been burned down in Rohingya-majority areas of Myanmar’s northwest in the last week, the government said on Saturday, in one of the deadliest bouts of violence involving the Muslim minority in decades.
About 58,600 Rohingya have fled into neighboring Bangladesh from Myanmar, according to UN refugee agency UNHCR, as aid workers there struggle to cope.
Myanmar officials blamed the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) for the burning of the homes. The group claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks on security posts last week that prompted clashes and a large army counter-offensive.
But Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh say a campaign of arson and killings by the Myanmar army is aimed at trying to force them out.
The treatment of Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing leader Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by Western critics of not speaking out for a minority that has long complained of persecution.
The clashes and army crackdown have killed nearly 400 people and more than 11,700 “ethnic residents” have been evacuated from the area, the government said, referring to the non-Muslim population of northern Rakhine.
It marks a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered since October, when similar but much smaller Rohingya attacks on security posts prompted a brutal military response dogged by allegations of rights abuses.
“A total of 2,625 houses from Kotankauk, Myinlut and Kyikanpyin villages and two wards in Maungtaw were burned down by the ARSA extremist terrorists,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said on Saturday. The group has been declared a terrorist organization by Myanmar government.
But New York-based Human Rights Watch, which analyzed satellite imagery and accounts from Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, said the Myanmar security forces deliberately set the fires.
“New satellite imagery shows the total destruction of a Muslim village, and prompts serious concerns that the level of devastation in northern Rakhine state may be far worse than originally thought,” said the group’s deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson.
Near the Naf river separating Myanmar and Bangladesh on Saturday, new arrivals in Bangladesh carrying their belongings in sacks were setting up crude shelters or trying to squeeze into available shelters or homes of local residents.
“The existing camps are near full capacity and numbers are swelling fast. In the coming days there needs to be more space,” said UNHCR regional spokeswoman Vivian Tan, adding that more refugees were expected.
The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Myanmar and regarded as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots that date back centuries. Bangladesh is also growing increasingly hostile to Rohingya, more than 400,000 of whom live in the poor South Asian country after fleeing Myanmar since the early 1990s.
Jalal Ahmed, 60, who arrived in Bangladesh on Friday with a group of about 3,000 after walking from Kyikanpyin for almost a week, said he believed the Rohingya were being pushed out of Myanmar.
“The military came with 200 people to the village and started fires… All the houses in my village are already destroyed. If we go back there and the army sees us, they will shoot,” he said.
Reuters could not independently verify these accounts as access for independent journalists to northern Rakhine has been restricted since security forces locked down the area.