July 2007 in Africa

__NOTOC__ This page deals with events in or related to the continent of Africa in June 2007.

• The 9th summit of the Assembly of the African Union which lasted for 3 days ends in Accra, Ghana. (BBC) {Ghana Home Page}

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• The Nigerian kidnappers of three-year-old British toddler Margaret Hill threaten to kill her, unless her father, Port Harcourt bar owner Mike Hill, takes her place. (Middle East Times)
• The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions votes to strike for higher wages as inflation in Zimbabwe rises above 10,000%. (allAfrica)

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• Georgina Theodora Wood, the first female Chief Justice of Ghana was today decorated with the Order of the Star of Ghana, the country's highest honour for distinguished services to the nation. (Ghana News Agency)
• Newly declassified French government documents show that as President François Mitterrand knowingly supported the Rwandan [...] because he believed it would limit "Anglo-Saxon influence." (The Independent)

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• Nigerian gunmen release British toddler Margaret Hill kidnapped in the south of Nigeria on Thursday. (CNN)

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• The President of the Swiss Confederation, Mrs. Micheline Calmy-Rey has begun a 2-day visit to Ghana.(Ghana News Agency)
• The Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano has completed a three day visit to Ghana.(Ghana Home Page)
• The Gaddafi Foundation announces a deal has been reached with families of more than 400 children infected with HIV in the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor. (AP via the Guardian)

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• The Supreme Court of Libya upholds the death penalty for the six Bulgarian medics and one Palestinian doctor accused of infecting children with HIV. (AP)

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• Two British girls are arrested at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana for attempting to smuggle 6.5 kg of [...] worth £300,000 to the UK.(BBC)
• Cécilia Sarkozy, the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, flies to Libya and visits the Bulgarian medics condemned to death for allegedly infecting children with HIV and also the families of the infected children. She will also meet Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, the President of Libya. (BBC)
• The government of Côte d'Ivoire decides to ask the United Nations to probe the failed assassination attempt against Prime Minister Guillaume Soro. (BBC)
• The government of Liberia submits a bill to the Parliament which would allow the seizure of the assets of former President Charles G. Taylor, his relatives and associates. (BBC)

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• Sudan and a breakaway faction of the Justice and Equality Movement of Darfur sign a peace treaty. (Sudan Tribune)
• A Somali peace conference in Mogadishu gets off to a bad start as it is disrupted by mortar shells. (AFP via ABC)

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• The supreme court of Libya commutes the death sentence of five Bulgarians and a Palestinian convicted of injecting over 400 children with HIV to life imprisonment.(Guardian Unlimited)(Forbes.com)
• The Sudanese government says that a recent attempted coup d'état did not have the support of the United States government, contrary to previous accusations from Nafi Ali Nafi, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's assistant. The government has arrested 14 members of the Umma Reform and Renewal Party for plotting the coup. (VOA News)

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• The National Resistance Movement, the governing party of Uganda, announces plans to introduce compulsory national service. (The Kampala Monitor)
• Suspected Somali insurgents target a peace meeting with mortar fire but accidentally kill six children. (Reuters via Canada.com)
• Heritage Oil and Gas finds a petroleum deposit in Uganda. HOG estimates the deposit contains several billions of barrels of oil, the largest find in Africa in over a decade. (AllAfrica)

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• The Government of Ethiopia pardons and frees opposition leaders who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for their roles in riots following 2005 elections. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi denies that the release was forced by the United States. (BBC)

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• The United Nations suspends a Moroccan peacekeeping contingent in the Côte d'Ivoire following allegations of widespread [...] abuse. (Reuters via CNN)
• Somali pirates demand $1.5 million in ransom for the release of a Danish freighter and its crew. (AFP via ABC News Australia)
• Two Rwandan men wanted for their role in the 1994 [...] are arrested in France. (BBC)

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• Voters in Cameroon go to the polls for parliamentary elections. (BBC)

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• The 5 Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian assistant, imprisoned in Libya for 8 years and that had been sentenced to death, in several trials based on allegations of having inoculated AIDS to children, are leaving Libya and returning back to Sofia with Mrs Sarkozy who negotiated their liberation. (Reuters Alertnet)

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• Clinical trials for MVA85A, a new vaccine against tuberculosis, are started in South Africa. (BBC)
• Abel Mutsakani, editor of the ZimOnline, is shot and seriously wounded in Johannesburg, South Africa in what may have been an assassination attempt. (AllAfrica)
• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation dispatches a team to investigate the shooting of four mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (CNN)
• Jailed policeman Eugene de Kock claims in an interview from prison that former South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk had hands "soaked in blood" and had ordered political killings and other crimes during the anti-apartheid conflict. (BBC)
• A general strike goes into its third day in Swaziland; strikers demand democratic elections and an end to absolute monarchy. (M&C)
• Five thousand Zimbabweans have been arrested in the last month for violating price controls. (AP via CNN)
• The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia reports that the Islamic Courts Union has received armaments, including surface-to-air missiles, from Eritrea. (BBC)

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• The government of Liberia removes a six-year ban on the mining and export of diamonds, imposed during the Second Liberian Civil War by ex-President Charles Taylor to comply with UN sanctions. (BBC)

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• The President of the Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo visits the former rebel held north for the first time since 2002 where stockpiled weapons will be burnt as a symbol of reconciliation after the end of an uprising. (BBC)

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