YANGON: A Myanmar junta court has hit ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi with five new corruption charges related to the alleged hiring and purchase of a helicopter, sources close to the case said.
The Nobel laureate, 76, has been detained since the February 1 coup last year which triggered mass protests and a bloody crackdown on dissent with more than 1,400 civilians killed, according to a local monitoring group.
Suu Kyi is facing a raft of criminal and corruption charges — including violating the country’s official secrets laws — and if convicted of all of them could face sentences tallying more than 100 years of prison.
The charges were leveled against Suu Kyi on Friday afternoon and related to the hire, maintenance and purchase of a helicopter, the sources said.
Former Myanmar president U Win Myint was also hit with the same charges, they said.
In December, state newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar said the pair would be prosecuted for not following financial regulations and causing a loss to the state over the rent and purchase of a helicopter for former government minister Win Myat Aye.
He rented the helicopter from 2019 to 2021 and used it for only 84.95 hours out of 720 rental hours, the paper said.
He is now in hiding, along with other former lawmakers.
A Myanmar court on Monday convicted Suu Kyi of three criminal charges related to illegally importing and owning walkie talkies and breaking coronavirus rules.
She was sentenced to four years in prison.
In December, she also received a two-year jail sentence for incitement against the military and for other coronavirus violations.
The six years of jail time will likely prevent Suu Kyi from participating in fresh elections that the military junta has vowed to hold by August 2023.
Suu Kyi is expected to remain under house arrest as the other legal cases progress.
Journalists have been barred from attending the special court hearings in Naypyidaw and her lawyers were recently banned from speaking to the media.
The daughter of an independence hero, Suu Kyi spent nearly two decades enduring long stretches of house arrest under the former military regime.
Her time in office was marred by her government’s handling of the Rohingya refugee crisis in which hundreds of thousands escaped to Bangladesh in 2017 as they faced rapes, arson and extrajudicial killings at the hands of the Myanmar military.
Before the coup, Suu Kyi was on the cusp of beginning another five-year term as the country’s de facto leader after the National League for Democracy won a landslide in November 2020 polls.
AFP sought comment from the Myanmar junta — which calls itself the State Administration Council.
Myanmar junta hits Aung San Suu Kyi with five new charges over helicopter purchase
https://arab.news/w5242
Myanmar junta hits Aung San Suu Kyi with five new charges over helicopter purchase
- The Nobel laureate has been detained since the February 1 coup last year
- Suu Kyi is expected to remain under house arrest as the other legal cases progress
Swedish intelligence lowers terror threat level
The Swedish Security Service (Sapo) raised the level in August 2023 to “high threat” — the fourth level on a scale of five — after angry reactions to a series of protests involving desecrations of the Qur'an made the country a “prioritized target.”
“Propaganda against Sweden has subsided and Sweden is not specifically mentioned as a target,” Fredrik Hallstrom, head of operations at the Swedish Security Service, told a press conference.
“We do not see the same intense flow of attack threats directed at Sweden,” he added.
Sapo said it now considered the terror alert level to be at “elevated threat” — the third level on its five-point scale.
Hallstrom cautioned that with “an elevated threat, there is room for a terrorist attack to occur.”
A series of Qur'an burnings across the country — most notably by Iraqi Christian Salwan Momika — in the summer of 2023 sparked outrage in the Muslim world.
It strained relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries, and Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion.
Momika ended up facing charges of inciting ethnic hatred, but in January of this year he was fatally shot in an apartment just hours before the court was due to deliver its ruling.
His co-protester Salwan Najem, also of Iraqi origin, was ultimately found guilty of inciting ethnic hatred during four Qur'an burnings in 2023.
Despite the lowered threat level, Charlotte von Essen, head of Sapo, stressed that “Sweden is in a serious security situation.”
“The worst in many years,” von Essen told reporters.
The Sapo chief pointed to the fact that the war in Ukraine was still ongoing.
“Foreign powers — and Russia in particular — are carrying out extensive security-threatening activities in and against Sweden,” she said.
Congo votes to lift immunity of former president Kabila
Congo’s senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of lifting former President Joseph Kabila’s immunity from prosecution in a late night vote on Thursday over his alleged links to the M23 rebel group.
Kabila is wanted in Congo for alleged crimes against humanity for supporting the insurgency in the east, including a role in the massacre of civilians and personnel. Congo has also moved to suspend his political party and seize the assets of its leaders.
Kabila, who denies any ties to the rebel group, stepped down after almost 20 years in power in 2018, yielding to protests. He has been out of the Central African country since late 2023, mostly in South Africa.
The senate backed lifting his immunity by 88 votes to 5 in a secret ballot.
Kabila has been threatening to return to Congo for weeks to help find a solution to the crisis in the east, where Rwandan-backed M23 rebels now control large swathes of territory.
A return to Congo by Kabila could complicate the bid to end the rebellion in eastern Congo, which contains vast supplies of critical minerals that President Donald Trump’s administration is keen to access.
Washington is pushing for a peace agreement between the two sides to be signed this summer, accompanied by minerals deals aimed at bringing billions of dollars of Western investment to the region, Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, told Reuters earlier this month.
Kabila came to power in 2001 after his father’s assassination. He refused to stand down when his final term officially ended in 2016, leading to deadly protests, before agreeing to leave office following an election in 2018.
Bangladesh minister says Yunus ‘not going to step down’
- Muhammad Yunus had threatened to quit the job if parties did not give him their backing
- Yunus has promised polls will be held by June 2026 at the latest, but supporters of the BNP demanded he fix a date
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s Muhammad Yunus “needs to remain” in office as interim leader to ensure a peaceful transition of power, a cabinet member and special adviser to Yunus said Friday.
Yunus, the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who took over after a mass uprising last year, had threatened to quit the job if parties did not give him their backing, a political ally and sources in his office said.
The South Asian nation of around 170 million people has been in political turmoil since the student-led revolt that toppled then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, with parties protesting on the streets over a string of demands.
“For the sake of Bangladesh and a peaceful democratic transition, Professor Yunus needs to remain in office,” Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, a special assistant to Yunus, and head of the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, said in a post on Facebook.
“The Chief Adviser is not going to step down,” he added. “He does not hanker after power.”
Bangladesh’s political crisis has escalated this week, with rival parties protesting on the streets of the capital Dhaka with a string of competing demands.
Yunus’s reported threat to stand down came after thousands of supporters of the powerful Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) rallied in Dhaka on Wednesday, holding large-scale protests against the interim government for the first time.
Yunus has promised polls will be held by June 2026 at the latest, but supporters of the BNP — seen as the front-runners in highly anticipated elections that will be the first since Hasina was overthrown — demanded he fix a date.
Yunus’s relationship with the military has also reportedly deteriorated.
According to local media and military sources, powerful army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said on Wednesday that elections should be held by December.
Taiyeb issued a warning to the army on Friday.
“The army can’t meddle in politics,” he wrote.
“The army doesn’t do that in any civilized country,” he added.
“By saying that the election has to be held by December, the military chief failed to maintain his jurisdictional correctness.”
UK newspaper The Telegraph set for US ownership
LONDON: British right-wing newspaper The Telegraph has agreed a deal that would see it purchased by US investment group RedBird Capital Partners for £500 million ($670 million), the pair announced Friday.
RedBird has struck an “in-principle agreement” to purchase The Telegraph Media Group (TMG), which comprises the 170-year-old paper’s print and online operations, a joint statement said.
It concludes a protracted sale lasting around two years, which has involved an intervention by the previous Conservative government.
US-Emirati consortium RedBird IMI had already struck a deal for TMG in late 2023.
However, the previous UK government triggered a swift resale amid concern over the potential impact on freedom of speech given Abu Dhabi’s press censorship record.
RedBird Capital Partners on Friday said the agreement struck with TMG makes it “the sole control owner” and “unlocks a new era of growth for the title” founded in 1855.
“RedBird’s growth strategy will include capital investment in digital operations, subscriptions and journalism as it looks to expand The Telegraph internationally.”
The US group added it is in “discussions with select UK-based minority investors with print media expertise and strong commitment to upholding the editorial values of The Telegraph.”
South Sudan refugees in Ethiopia face imminent ‘health catastrophe’
- A power-sharing agreement between the warring parties provided a fragile calm
- The NGO also announced that it had moved its medical services from the Ethiopian border town of Burbeiye to the more distant Mattar
ADDIS ABABA: South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia face an imminent “health catastrophe,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Friday, citing a cholera epidemic and cases of severe acute malnutrition.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country after gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, was plunged into a violent civil war between 2013 and 2018 that claimed around 400,000 lives.
A power-sharing agreement between the warring parties provided a fragile calm, but it has all but collapsed as violent clashes have broken out between forces allied to President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, First Vice President Riek Machar, who was put under house arrest in March.
According to MSF, 35,000 to 85,000 South Sudanese refugees have fled to Mattar, an Ethiopian town near the border with South Sudan.
“The local infrastructure is stretched beyond capacity,” the NGO said in a statement, adding that “with the resurgence of waterborne diseases such as cholera and acute watery diarrhea, the risk of a health disaster is imminent.”
MSF said it had treated around 1,200 patients with cholera, a disease that can be fatal in 10-20 percent of cases.
“Over 40 percent of malaria rapid diagnostic tests have returned positive, and nearly 7 percent of children under five show signs of severe acute malnutrition,” MSF added.
The NGO also announced that it had moved its medical services from the Ethiopian border town of Burbeiye to the more distant Mattar due to armed clashes between “the South Sudanese army and an opposition group” along the border.
It has received more than 200 people with “war injuries” in Burbeiye since the fighting began in February, it said.
MSF urged the various parties to the conflict in South Sudan to “ensure a safe humanitarian space and protect civilians and aid workers alike,” and called on international donors to scale up assistance particularly in Mattar “where shelter, water and medical care are in too low supply for people who have fled horrific violence.”
