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UN cuts details of Western profiteers from Congo report By Declan Walsh in Nairobi 27 October 2003 A controversial section has been omitted from a UN report on the plunder of wealth in the Democratic Republic of Congo due out this week. Senior UN officials objected to part of the report by a UN panel investigating the illegal exploitation of Congo's wealth, fearing it could derail the peace process. Sources say the section includes details on how shady networks of business and military figures, some tied to the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, are continuing illegally to export gold, diamonds...

A British farmer who stood up to Robert Mugabe and was beaten, abducted and finally had his house burnt down has travelled to Washington to ask the Obama administration to put pressure on the Zimbabwe government before it seizes the last remaining white farms. Ben Freeth and his wife Laura with their children Anna, Phillip and Josh. Ben Freeth, who moved to Zimbabwe from Kent, joined his father-in-law Mike Campbell in taking Mugabe to an international court to stop the farm seizures. Their secret footage of the campaign of intimidation launched against them will form part of a film to...

HARARE, ZIMBABWE - The protest was scheduled for 10 a.m., but at the appointed hour not a single demonstrator was in sight. It was like any other weekday morning on a busy Harare street, bustling with hawkers and beggars, shoppers and businessmen. Suddenly, 15 men materialized from the crowd, pulling creased signs from beneath their shirts. For a minute or so, they silently held their antigovernment placards aloft. Then as quickly as they appeared, they melted back into street, the yellow cardboard littering the ground the only evidence that any protest had occurred. Almost a year after Zimbabwe's disputed presidential...

The treason trial of a key opposition leader in Zimbabwe has been postponed for six weeks, his lawyer said Monday. Morgan Tsvangirai is accused of plotting the assassination of longtime ruler President Robert Mugabe. He denies the charges. The trial, the longest in Zimbabwe's legal history, began in February. In recess for the last month, it had been scheduled to resume Monday with Tsvangirai giving evidence in High Court. But Innocent Chagonda, his lawyer, said the hearing was postponed until Oct. 27. Court officials, noting the trial had delayed other court business, said presiding Judge Paddington Garwe would not be...

The death of the child, Sean, comes less than a month after Mr Tsvangirai's wife Susan died in a car crash.

SENIOR Zanu PF politicians and members of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces have with the help of Canadian lobbyists Dickens & Madson turned Zimbabwe into a hub for trade in "blood" diamonds illegally brought into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it emerged this week. The Zimbabwe Independent has been told how gemstones from the DRC have been laundered to line the pockets of Zanu PF big-wigs. American international diamond buyer, John Marsischky, managing director of gemstones company Flashes of Color, revealed in an interview this week that Dickens & Madson, the company which last week claimed it ...

Tsvangirai says he is being framed Lawyers defending Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on treason charges have accused the key prosecution witness of being a serial fraudster. They say that Canada-based political consultant Ari Ben-Menashe video-taped a meeting with Mr Tsvangirai as part of a government plot to stifle the opposition. Mr Tsvangirai and two colleagues from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) pleaded not guilty to treason charges when the trial began on Monday. Mr Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence officer, says the three contracted him to assassinate President Robert Mugabe before last year's elections. Mr Mugabe won but...

<p>Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad asset who was used by Israeli intelligence to blackmail politicians, according to a former Israeli spy.</p> <p>Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli spy and alleged “handler” of Robert Maxwell, told the authors of a new book, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales, that Epstein ran a “complex intelligence operation” at the behest of Mossad.</p>

<p>JOHANNESBURG - In 1963, lawyer George Bizos saved anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela from the gallows, and Mr. Mandela went on to become president of South Africa. Forty years later, he is defending Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on a capital charge of plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe.</p>