Moroccan authorities “violently” put down peaceful protests in Western Sahara earlier this week, and blocked ambulances trying to take away the injured, activist Aminatou Haidar charges.
In a surprise move, Mauritania’s Constitutional Council rejected 10 articles of a new anti-terrorism law that allowed warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention.
A criminal court in Algeria acquitted former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mustafa Hemlili of charges of counterfeiting and affiliation with a militant group.
A race between French and Chinese uranium interests—and a possible uranium deal with Iran—may be behind the coup d’etat that topped President Mamadou Tandja in Niger.
Moroccan authorities ordered closed the independent news magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire following what editors and press freedom advocates call a long campaign of harassment.
The Justice Department has announced charges against three purported al-Qaeda militants for arranging a cocaine deal with an infiltrator posing as a FARC representative.
Western Sahara independence activist Aminatou Haidar is on hunger-strike at an airport in Spain, demanding the right to return to her country without acknowledging Moroccan sovereignty over it.
An Algerian court sentenced in absentia Guantánamo detainee Ahmed Belbacha to 20 years in prison. Belbacha says he fears torture in Algeria and has requested asylum in the US.
An Algerian court acquitted former two Guantánamo detainees. Their lawyer said that while the men admitted to involvement in theft and drug trafficking, they denied any link with terrorism.
Hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police in Algiers as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Vicki Huddleston arrived for talks on closer counter-terrorism ties.
Dissident rebel factions in Niger are refusing to honor a peace deal brokered between the government and Tuareg guerillas by Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi.
The issue of Western Sahara, Africa’s last colony, was discussed in depth at the UN’s Decolonization Committee meeting in New York this week.
