Article

2018-10-03 Africa Subsaharan

Jihadist insurgency: Mozambique to put 180 Islamist suspects on trial

[News24] Mozambique will on Wednesday put on trial 180 national and foreign citizens accused of involvement in deadly Islamist attacks in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, sources told AFP.

Over the last year, more than 50 people have been killed in gun, grenade and knife assaults in the growing jihadist insurgency, with the militants reportedly seeking to impose Sharia law in the Muslim-majority province.

The trial - the first since the attacks began - will be held in an improvised court in the jail where hundreds of suspected militants are being detained in Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado, a court source said on Tuesday.

Among the defendants are 5O citizens from neighbouring Tanzania.

"This is only the first group to be tried among hundreds of detainees," a police source said.

The attackers are believed to have staged their first attack on a police station and military outpost in the town of Mocimboa da Praia in October 2017. Two officers died and 14 attackers were killed.

This article starring:
Cabo Delgado

Posted by Besoeker 2018-10-03 02:40|| || Front Page|| [11141 views ] Top
File under: al-Shabaab (AQ)

#1 Long-term correctional facilities and chow are in short supply. It might not go well for the defendants.

Posted by Besoeker 2018-10-03 08:29|| 2018-10-03 08:29|| Front Page Top

#2 From a site called Strategic Intelligence in May:

Mozambique Islamic Militants Attack Village Killing Several Civilians

At least 20 people have been beheaded in northern Mozambique by Islamic militant, children being among those targeted in Monjane village in Cabo Delgado province, a hotspot for mining and petroleum.

The Islamic militant group has a history of launching attacks in the region the whole of last year. The group that was formed in 2015 has been making millions of dollars from selling timber and rubies.

A statement by one of the victims, who is also the Monjane village elder, indicated that the attackers went for the chief as he was providing police officers with information about the outlawed group. Research has also shown that members of the group were stanch followers of Kenyan radical Islamic scholar, Abud Rogo, who was killed in 2012. After his death, his followers escaped to Kibiti, southern Tanzania close to the border of Mozambique.

Since last year October, police have arrested 200 of the militants.

Earlier this month, Mozambique’s parliament approved a bill that would punish acts of terrorism with jail terms of up to 24 years

Posted by trailing wife 2018-10-03 14:37|| 2018-10-03 14:37|| Front Page Top

#3 And a Reuters article in Investing.com in June names them:

Attacks in northern Mozambique kill 39 since May: report

(Reuters) - Attacks by armed groups in northern Mozambique, where huge gas reserves are being developed, have killed at least 39 people and displaced more than 1,000 since May, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

Violence first broke out in Mozambique's northern province of Cabo Delgado in October last year, with local residents reporting gangs armed with machetes attacking police stations, torching villages and executing religious leaders.

The United States embassy last week advised its citizens to leave the province after attacks increased in a region where Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE:APC) is beginning to develop a $15 billion liquefied natural gas project.

Britain has also advised against traveling to the area.

The group implicated is known locally as Al-Sunna wa Jama’a and Al-Shabab, although there are no known links to the Somali group of the same name or any other Islamist movement.

Residents told Human Rights Watch attackers had burned a mosque and beheaded an Islamic leader in a June 5 attack where hundreds of homes and dozens of cattle were burned.

Mozambique has not been a focal point of Islamist militant activity in the past and police have been reluctant to ascribe the attacks to Islamists. About 30 percent of Mozambique's 30 million people are Roman Catholics; about 18 percent are Muslim.

Posted by trailing wife 2018-10-03 15:07|| 2018-10-03 15:07|| Front Page Top

#4 A search of the Rantburg archives using the term “Cabo Delgado“ yields the following:

10/29/2017: Locals called these raiders 'al-Shabaab'. Whether they call themselves this too, or whether it's because of their headgear and what they reportedly told locals after occupying Mocímboa da Praia - that they rejected state health and education and refused to pay taxes - is not yet clear.

There was understandably speculation at first that they were linked to the Somali jihadist group of the same name. But Dina cast doubt on this interpretation from the start, as he said they spoke in local languages including Swahili and Portuguese. There now seems to be consensus that they are local Moslems. Eric Morier-Genoud, the Mozambican-born political scientist from Queens University, Belfast, wrote in The Conversation that this was a group of local Moslems formed in 2014 and calling itself al-Shabaab.

3/30/2018: in Mocimboa, the emergence of a radical faction in the Moslem community was widely known. "It started three years ago. Fifty or so young people from the town said that we weren't true Moslems," said Ussene Amisse, a teacher at a Koranic school.

"Some of them learnt these things in Somalia. It was when they returned that they started to cause problems."

Radicalized men told their followers not to send their children to school, not to vote and to disobey the authorities.

"They followed the example of fundamentalists in other countries," sighs Amadi Mboni, one of the town's religious leaders.

"We knew, we informed our authorities of the danger -- but we weren't able to prevent some of our children and grandchildren from joining them."

According to official statistics, 17 percent of Mozambicans are Moslem but Islamic leaders say the real figure could be double. In Mocimboa, more than half of the population is Moslem.

Frelimo, the ruling party since national independence, has long trumpeted the peaceful coexistence of different religions in Mozambique. But the country's north has largely been excluded from the economic growth of the last 20 years.

Many in the north also doubt that they will reap the rewards of the vast gas deposits recently discovered off the shores of Palma near Mocimboa.

In a region which sees itself as a neglected outpost, radical al-Shabaab-style ideology has found a receptive audience.

Posted by trailing wife 2018-10-03 18:58|| 2018-10-03 18:58|| Front Page Top

#5 Sorry. The link for 2/30/2018 is here. I found it searching for Mozambique.

Posted by trailing wife 2018-10-03 19:12|| 2018-10-03 19:12|| Front Page Top

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