Mali’s army claims arrest of Daesh group leader

BAMAKO: Mali says it is outraged over violence suffered by its citizens deported by neighboring Mauritania and has demanded the “flagrant violation of human rights” must end.
For several weeks, Mauritania has been throwing out migrants, mostly from neighboring countries in west Africa like Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Guinea.
The vast, arid country on the Atlantic seaboard is a departure point for many African migrants seeking to reach Europe by sea.
The authorities say their “routine” deportations target undocumented people.
But the campaign has sparked an outcry in the region.
“The government of Mali expresses its indignation and condemns with the utmost rigour the treatment suffered by its nationals in Mauritania,” it said in a statement released during a press conference on the issue held in the capital Bamako.
It also said it regretted “the conditions of arrest in flagrant violation of human rights and the rights of migrants in particular.
The government said it “calls on the Mauritanian authorities to show restraint and calls for an immediate cessation of violence against Malian nationals.”
Migrants’ rights groups such as SOS Esclaves have condemned arrests in “inhumane” conditions.
Mauritania says the migrants are returned to the border crossings through which they had entered the country.
More than 1,800 Malian migrants have been pushed back from Mauritania in recent weeks, according to Minister for Malians Living Abroad Mossa Ag Attaher.
Talks with Mauritania will continue “to preserve the solid historic ties between the two countries,” the Malian government said.
The state AMI news agency reported that Mali’s foreign minister, Abdoulaye Diop, visited Mauritania on Thursday to deliver a message on maintaining the “friendly and brotherly relations” between the two countries.
His Mauritanian counterpart, Mohamed Salem Ould Merzoug, raised the issue of their respective citizens in each other’s country, AMI said.
But Ould Merzoug insisted that Mauritania “has the right to take all necessary measures to ensure its security and to protect its citizens,” the agency reported.

KATMANDU: Nepal police fired tear gas and water cannon on Friday to disperse thousands of people gathered in Katmandu demanding the restoration of the monarchy, prompting authorities to impose a curfew in the area.

The Himalayan nation adopted a federal and republican political system in 2008 after parliament abolished the monarchy as part of a peace deal that ended a decade-long civil war responsible for more than 16,000 deaths.
Support for the restoration of the monarchy re-enshrining Hinduism as the state religion has grown in tandem with popular dissatisfaction over political instability, corruption and lackluster economic development.
“The country should have developed significantly. People should have had better job opportunities, peace and security and good governance. We should have been corruption-free,” Mina Subedi, 55, who joined the demonstration, told AFP.
“But things have only deteriorated.”
Protesters gathered near the national parliament chanting that the king and country were “dearer to us than life.”
Police spokesman Dinesh Kumar Acharya told AFP that police fired tear gas and water cannon to clear the demonstrators after they broke into a restricted area and vandalized buildings.
Local authorities announced a curfew in the area after the clash.
Opposition parties marshalled thousands more people at a counter-demonstration elsewhere in the capital to “safeguard the republican system.”
“Nepalis will not return to the past,” said Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former guerrilla chief who led the decade-long Maoist insurgency before entering politics and has since served as prime minister three times.
“Maybe they have dared to raise their heads because us republic supporters have not been able to deliver as per the wishes and wants of the people.”
Abdicated king Gyanendra Shah, 77, had largely refrained from commenting on Nepal’s fractious politics, but recently made several public appearances with supporters.
Shah was crowned in 2001 after his elder brother king Birendra Bir Bikram Shah and his family were killed in a palace massacre that wiped out most of the royal family.
His coronation took place as the Maoist insurgency was raging in far-flung corners of Nepal.
Shah suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament in 2005, triggering a democratic uprising in which the Maoists sided with Nepal’s political establishment to orchestrate huge street protests.
That eventually precipitated the end of the conflict, with parliament voting in 2008 to abolish Nepal’s 240-year-old Hindu monarchy.