African press review 14 July 2011

In Zimbabwe, The Herald reports that the ruling Zanu-PF party has challenged negotiators to the inter-party dialogue to revise some of the timelines they agreed on the election roadmap, insisting that general elections should be held this year.

After the party's Politburo meeting yesterday, Zanu-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo said the party was concerned at the delaying tactics allegedly being used by the Tsvangirai faction of the Movement for Democratic Change on the completion of the constitution-drafting process.

Gumbo said some of the timelines agreed on by negotiators were too long and should be cut to pave way for elections.

Still in Harare, Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Tendai Biti says there will be no supplementary budget this year when he presents his mid-term fiscal policy statement later this month.

Biti said the country's economy did not have the capacity to fund any extra allocations since it was already struggling to raise money to finance this year's budget.

In Nigeria, the front page of The Guardian is still dominated by news from, or related to, the recent violence in Maiduguri.

The paper says that security concerns heightened across the country yesterday as the military and police continued their offensive against the Boko Haram sect that has made Borno and some neighbouring states virtually ungovernable.

Some state governments and a federal agency hurriedly embarked on measures to evacuate their employees and corps members from Maiduguri.

An unusually heavy presence of police and State Security Services personnel was noticed in some Government Houses in the South-West and South-East zones. Even journalists were prevented from covering state functions as security simply turned them back at the gates.

At the Presidency in Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan continued with efforts to find a solution to the threat to national stability posed by the islamic fundamentalists of Boko Haram. Jonathan yesterday met the former governor of Borno State, Modu Sheriff, who many prominent northerner accuse of forming the Boko Haram group while he was still in office.

For the first time, a study has suggested that antiretroviral drugs could be used, not just to treat HIV/Aids, but to prevent new infections.

The development came as the National Agency for the Control of Aids in Nigeria is considering putting all HIV serodiscordant couples (one partner has HIV and the other does not), men having sex with men, and commercial sex workers on HIV drugs to prevent infection.

An international study from nine research sites in Kenya and Uganda has demonstrated that individuals at high risk for HIV infection who took a daily tablet containing an antiretroviral HIV medication experienced significantly fewer HIV infections compared to those who received a placebo pill.

A Kenyan who disappeared from Nairobi’s Eastleigh suburb two years ago is being held at a secret CIA prison in Mogadishu, according to a US magazine. The story appears in this morning's Daily Nation.

Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan was among several people snatched from Nairobi streets and then secretely transferred to the prison in the basement of the Mogadishu headquarters of Somalia’s National Security Agency, writes investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill in the New York-based Nation magazine.

One of the men held in the secret prison told a researcher with a British legal rights group called Reprieve that he had met Hassan in the prison.

Hassan told him that Kenyan police had knocked down his door, snatched him and taken him to a secret location in Nairobi, according to the article. The next night, he was transfered to Mogadishu.

Kenya has denied knowledge of Hassan’s whereabouts. Human Rights Watch and Reprieve claim that Kenyan security and intelligence forces have helped in scores of such summary arrests and illegal deportations for the US and other governments, including 85 to Somalia in 2007 alone.

The Daily Monitor in Uganda reports that president Museveni’s threat to call a referendum on his proposal to scrap the constitutional right to bail for specific offences yesterday drew criticism from human rights activists and the law fraternity outraged by what they say is an attack on the fundamental freedoms of Ugandans.

Museveni wants people accused of participating in protests, riots, those engaging in economic sabotage, treason, rape, murder and defilement to be held for not less than 180 days (six months) before they can be granted bail.

The proposal, which has been criticised for its apparent assault on the crucial principle of presumption of innocence, is also viewed as a ploy to punish Museveni’s political opponents and a direct attack on the constitutional guarantees intended to protect human rights and freedoms.