Free Republic

By Gemma Meyer (Gemma Meyer is the pseudonym of a South African journalist. She and her husband, a former conservative member of parliament, still reside in South Africa.) People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement). Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveal trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country. America's structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your...

Israeli diamond merchants active in West Africa, responding to the report in Haaretz on Monday that defense officials are worried Hezbollah terrorists will target Israeli communities there, said the Lebanese movement enjoyed the strong support of locals. "The big problem for Israelis in West Africa is that there are countries whose diamond industry is controled by Lebanese locals, a majority of whom openly support Hezbollah," a source in the Israeli diamond business said Monday. "In effect, these are countries which are known as Hezbollah states," he added. Israeli companies that deal in diamonds, agriculture, communications and security operate mainly in...

Russian Mogul's Planes Took al-Qaida, Taliban Gold To Sudan9-3-2 Planes owned by Russian businessman Viktor Bout have been used to fly al-Qaida and Taliban gold to Sudan in recent weeks, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Several shipments of gold were delivered by boat from Karachi, Pakistan, to either Iran or the United Arab Emirates, the newspaper said, citing unidentified European intelligence officials. From there, the gold was flown on charted planes to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, where al-Qaida has broad business contacts, the paper said. European officials believe the gold was transported by Air Bas, an airline set up...

Taylor 'had billions' in US banks Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor had transactions of about $5bn in two US bank accounts during his presidency, his prosecutor has told the BBC. Mr Taylor is being tried by a UN-backed war crimes court for backing rebels in Sierra Leone while in office. He denies trading arms for diamonds and challenged the international community when he stood down in 2003 to trace and seize any monies they alleged he had. If any was found he would "turn them over to the Liberian people". During Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war, which officially ended in...

Video footage of mutilated victims of Sierra Leone rebels has been shown at the war crimes trial of Liberia's former President Charles Taylor. Mr Taylor - who is accused of trading weapons for diamonds - showed no emotion as the first witness, an expert on "blood diamonds", gave evidence. The delayed trial has resumed at The Hague after a six-month delay. Mr Taylor is the first African former head of state to face an international war crimes court and faces 11 charges. He denies responsibility for atrocities committed by rebels during the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Video of...

NORFOLK — Two Navy men have been charged in an identity theft scheme accusing them of fleecing more than $200,000 from financial accounts, including two individuals’ home equity credit lines. Henry N. “Ike” Ihienkonye, a seaman in the personnel department at Norfolk Naval Station, faces a 15-count federal indictment that includes charges of conspiracy, bank fraud and aggravated identity theft.Alhaji K. Sesay , a petty officer 2nd class also known as “Lil’ J,” was charged with eight counts in the scheme.A third suspect, Antravious D. “Dirty” Beal, was charged with four counts. He is a civilian.The suspects, who are in...

(Sept. 19) - Adopted two days after her first birthday, Sarah Culberson grew up the youngest daughter in a close-knit family from Morgantown, W.Va. She was surrounded by love in her home, but always wondered about her roots. Searching to unlock the secrets of her past, at age 22, Culberson began searching for her birth parents. She quickly learned that her mom had died a dozen years earlier from cancer. Culberson was crushed. A few years later, a private investigator helped her locate her birth father, along with an unbelievable surprise. Culberson wasn't an average suburban girl -- she was...

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has said he is unhappy with "draconian" conditions in the Dutch prison where he is awaiting trial. Mr Taylor's lawyer made the complaint during his first appearance before a special UN-backed war crimes tribunal. Mr Taylor faces 11 war crimes charges after allegedly backing rebels in the decade-long Sierra Leone civil war. He was arrested in Nigeria this year and detained in Sierra Leone before being moved to The Hague for security. Attorney Karim Asad Ahmad Khan described The Hague jail regime as "far more draconian... than operates in Freetown", the capital of Sierra Leone....

Excerpt - THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor arrived in the Netherlands on Tuesday for a war crimes trial on charges accusing him in the death, rape or mutilation of hundreds of thousands of people in West Africa. An airport official said Taylor's U.N.-chartered plane landed after a direct flight from Sierra Leone, where he had been in detention since March 29. Two police vans and five motorcycle outriders were waiting on the tarmac at a small commercial airport south of The Hague. ~ snip ~

Chimpanzees are supposed to be the "good" apes, cute and funny, the hairy little people depicted in thousands of films and TV shows. But recent news out of western Africa shows they can be brutally fierce. A chimp attacked and killed a Sierra Leone man who was driving Americans to a wildlife refuge Sunday. Another man lost part of his hand in the attack. Some news reports said a group of up to 20 chimps that had broken out of their enclosures gang-attacked the men, while other stories have pinned responsibility on one animal, possibly a chimp named Bruno, the...

Taylor 'looked like whipped dog' as justice caught up By Hans Nichols in Freetown, Sierra Leone (Filed: 02/04/2006) Slumped and sombre, Charles Taylor uttered not a single word as he sat in the United Nations helicopter that spirited him from Liberia, where he once ruled, to neighbouring Sierra Leone, where he is accused of committing war crimes. "He looked like a whipped dog. A look of total defeat," said a UN official, one of 16 passengers on the flight that brought Taylor to the tribunal he has eluded for three years. Charles Taylor in Freetown "You look at someone that...

ALARM - Charles Taylor arrived to Monrovia and transferred in a helicopter MONROVIA - former bast president Charles Taylor, expelled Wednesday of Nigeria, arrived at the Roberts airport of Monrovia on board an apparatus of the Nigerian presidency and was immediately led in a helicopter of the United Nations, noted a correspondent of AFP.

Taylor Taken to Liberia to Face Charges By BASHIR ADIGUN, Associated Press Writer Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who vanished in Nigeria after authorities reluctantly agreed to transfer him to a war crimes tribunal, was arrested trying to cross the border into Cameroon, Nigerian police said Wednesday. He then was flown back to Liberia. Taylor was captured Tuesday night by security forces in the far northeastern border town of Gamboru, in Borno State, nearly 600 miles from the villa in southern Calabar from which he reportedly disappeared Monday night, Information Minister Frank Nweke said in a statement. President Olusegun Obasanjo,...

BRUSSELS - The European Union banned on Wednesday 92 airlines from operating in the 25-nation bloc, targeting mostly African carriers as it tries to boost air security and reassure travelers that European skies are safe. The executive European Commission approved the blacklist, which includes some 50 airlines from the Democratic Republic of Congo , 13 from Sierra Leone, 11 from Equatorial Guinea, six from Swaziland and three from Liberia. Thailand‘s Phuket Airlines was also on the list as were carriers from Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and North Korea . "The European Union now has a coherent approach to banning airlines," Transport Commissioner...

Diamond-producing countries and the diamond industry agreed yesterday to take unprecedented measures to stop the smuggling of "conflict diamonds" from West Africa. A resolution on Ivory Coast was unanimously approved at the Moscow plenary meeting of the Kimberley Process, the UN-backed international scheme to stop the illegal trading of gems. Recognising that millions of dollars' worth of conflict diamonds were being smuggled out of the rebel-held areas of Ivory Coast, members of participating countries agreed to put in place practical measures to stop the flow. "Intervention on the trade side will impose specific controls for diamonds in the whole West...

Dear Secretary General Annan, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Congo, East Timor, Afghanistan, Peru, Burma, Columbia — the litany of countries where women’s bodies have become the battlefield continues to grow. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 Tutsi women survived rape during the genocide in Rwanda. Between 20,000 and 50,000 women were raped during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s Not until after conflicts end does the world learn of the scale of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls. Exactly what is it that we learn? Looking at the situation in Darfur one...

DAKAR, 1 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The UN Security Council has voted to close down the UN peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone by the end of December, with the next contingent of troops due to pull out in mid-August. About 3,400 peacekeepers remain in the West African nation, three and a half years after the official end to a brutal civil war, which shocked the world with its images of drugged-up youths hacking the arms, legs, ears and lips off civilians. The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was created in October 1999 to help restore peace to Sierra Leone....

July 2, 2005: American military commanders are becoming increasingly worried about developments in West Africa, particularly the Gulf of Guinea. The western end (Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) is in melt-down, barely being held from total chaos by some 20,000 international peacekeepers. Worse, bandits and militiamen from these countries have occasionally spilled over into neighboring Guinea, threatening its stability and creating humanitarian emergencies, as they plunder, murder, and kidnap local people. At the other end, Nigeria is in semi-chaos, with the threat of religious civil war hovering over it while being troubled by increasingly dangerous criminal gangs pirating oil....

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - At a time when the United States has thousands of forces hunting Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, international investigators say the United States is ignoring another terrorist outlaw — former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who's hiding in plain sight in West Africa. This is a place most Americans and their government haven't paid much attention to. It is war-torn, remote and desperately poor. But that might be about to change. War crimes investigators have uncovered evidence that al-Qaida terrorists — before and after 9/11 — were using West Africa as...

Al-Qaïda and Taylor destabilize West Africa New York (the United Nations) - terrorist organization Al-Qaïda is active in West Africa and supports in particular activities of destabilization of the area to which the bast former president Charles Taylor delivers itself, affirmed Tuesday of the members of the special Court for Sierra Leone. The principal target of these activities of destabilization is Guinea where an attempted murder of president Lansana Conte already took place last January, in which Charles Taylor was implied, Al White affirmed, principal investigator of the Court, at the time of a press conference to the head...

Christians furious over ads saying Jesus supported taxes Mon Apr 25, 3:46 PM ET - AFP FREETOWN (AFP) - Tax officials in Sierra Leone have infuriated Christians with the publication of newspaper advertisements saying Jesus Christ supported the paying of taxes. The half-page advertisements said that when Jesus was asked if he was against a law requiring the payment of taxes to the Roman emperor he replied: "Pay the emperor what belongs to the emperor and pay to God what belongs to God," quoting from the Gospel of Matthew (22:17-21). It continued: "all Christians should follow the teachings and example...

A former Franklin High School student who stabbed a classmate in the back during a fight in the halls of the school pleaded guilty yesterday to aggravated assault and a weapons charge.  Fitzgerald Elliot, 17, will face five to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced by Superior Court Judge Paul Armstrong, who heard the plea bargain arrangement yesterday, the day Elliot's trial was to have started.  In return for pleading guilty to the lesser offenses, prosecutors dropped the most serious charge against him, attempted murder. He faced up to 20 years in prison on that count.  Assistant Somerset...

Two years after the charges first surfaced, Kofi Annan has finally admitted that U.N. peacekeeping troops sexually abused war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "I am really shocked by these accusations," the United Nations Secretary-General told reporters last week. He shouldn't be. Allegations of sex crimes committed by U.N. staff and troops date back at least a decade and span operations on three continents, in places like Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cambodia. But rather than showing the kind of "zero tolerance" toward sexual crimes that Mr. Annan now promises, the U.N. has treated such instances with cavalier...

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - A series of witnesses place six top al-Qaida fugitives in Africa buying up diamonds in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a confidential report by UN-backed prosecutors obtained by The Associated Press. The first-person accounts detailed by the prosecutors add to long-standing claims that al-Qaida laundered millions of dollars in terror funds through African diamonds before launching its deadliest offensive. Al-Qaida figures, including some already wanted in pre-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. targets, dealt directly with then-president Charles Taylor and other leaders and warlords in the West African country of Liberia from 1999...

Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces troops have been observed recently driving military vehicles through the Sahel desert, fraternizing with fellow troops from Burkina Faso and Niger, and riding the backs of camels under the desert sun, participating in a program to increase cooperation between West African militaries. The United States government in conjunction with the government of Sierra Leone and the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF) are supporting the Global War on Terrorism, through the "PAN SAHEL INITIATIVE", manifested through continued training and logistical operations at the Murray Town logistics facility in Freetown, managed by Pacific Architects...

Special Court Registrar, Robin Vincent has said that though a prepared cell awaits the arrival of former Liberian President, Charles Taylor to Freetown, the Court will not allow Taylor into its detention facility until it is proven that he was not brought in through illegitimate means. Speaking to journalists at UNMIL's Headquarters in Monrovia at the end of his two days visit to that country, Vincent said they have no plans to snatch Taylor from his hiding in Calabar, Nigeria. He however stressed that a Red Alert has been issued by Interpol to get Taylor and he encouraged the Nigerian...

The US is stepping up its anti-terrorist efforts in west Africa amid continuing controversy over alleged links between al-Qaeda and the smuggling of Sierra Leonean diamonds through Liberia. Washington has begun looking more closely at terrorist financing in a region where the US military is increasingly active in efforts to disrupt terrorist networks, according to government officials and a leading Congressman. A US Congressional panel on the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks concluded this month there was "no persuasive evidence" that al-Qaeda funded itself through trafficking in diamonds from African states experiencing civil wars. But a US government official covering...

BC-BULLETIN MORE THAN 20 UN STAFF AND OTHERS BELIEVED DEAD IN SIERRA LEONE COPTER CRASH -UN REUTERS

5million Returning To Home Countries In AfricaMonday, 16 February 2004, 9:33 amPress Release: United Nations UN Refugee Agency Anticipates Millions Returning To Home Countries In Africa With more than 5 million African refugees and internally displaced people preparing to return home, the United Nations refugee agency announced plans today to hold a ministerial-level meeting next month on comprehensive regional approaches to repatriation and sustainable reintegration on the continent. The Dialogue on Voluntary Repatriation and Sustainable Reintegration in Africa will bring together key ministers, donor governments and other partners at the UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss peace processes...

15 UN peacekeepers among dead By DULUE MBACHU Benin plane crash toll rises to 128 Lebanese passenger Nabil Hashim laughs with his brother Ali, Saturday in a hospital in Beirut, Lebanon. Hashim is one of the more than 20 people who survived Thursday's plane crash into the sea near Benin; 161 people were on board. (AP/Mahmoud Tawil) COTONOU, Benin (AP) - Fifteen army officers from Bangladesh returning from UN peacekeeping duty in West Africa were among at least 138 people killed when a jet clipped a building and crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff on Christmas Day, officials said...

Diplomatic bag is used to bring in heroin By Tim Butcher, Africa Correspondent (Filed: 30/10/2003) A row between Britain and Sierra Leone was threatened yesterday after Gatwick customs officials discovered heroin worth thousands of pounds spilling out of what appeared to be a diplomatic bag en route to the West African nation's high commission in London. They found the heroin after the bag, which had arrived at Gatwick from Freetown, burst open, scattering video tapes packed with the heroin. Four Sierra Leonean government officials have been arrested in Freetown and are being questioned in connection with an alleged smuggling ring....

Pierce County prosecutors say a former Muslim cleric who pleaded guilty to a weapons charge in a terrorism investigation molested a girl in his family. Charging documents say the wife of Semi Osman, 33, told investigators that an 11-year-old girl in the family recently disclosed that Osman touched her sexually. Prosecutors charged him with three counts of first-degree molestation. Osman has pleaded not guilty in Superior Court. Judge Sergio Armijo ordered him held in lieu of $50,000 bail. Osman also is being held by immigration officials pending a deportation hearing related to an earlier conviction. In April, U.S. District Judge...

No quick-fix peace job in Liberia, says UN official By Tim Butcher in Freetown (Filed: 18/08/2003) A robust peacekeeping mission with troops able to defend themselves is needed in Liberia if it is to avoid the problems that faced British troops in Sierra Leone, the country's top UN official said yesterday. Speaking as planners prepared details of the UN mission which will take over from west African peacekeepers currently deployed in Liberia, Alan Doss said the new mission would need a tough mandate lasting many years. A pile of discarded weapons at a checkpoint in Monrovia "The lesson of Sierra...

One of Africa's most brutal regimes is due to end today when Charles Taylor steps down as president of Liberia, giving a war-ravaged region a fragile opportunity for peace. Mr Taylor has promised to hand over power at 11.59am and head into exile, raising hopes that west Africa can escape a decade-long cycle of violence and instability. The warlord-turned president has bowed to pressure from the international community as well as rebels who control most of the countryside and much of the capital, Monrovia. In a televised address last night he said he was the victim of a Washington-led conspiracy...

MONROVIA - Liberia's president appears to be backing away from a promise to leave his war-battered country and take up asylum in Nigeria. Charles Taylor agreed to quit his post next Monday in a bid to end fighting between government forces and rebel groups. But on Tuesday, a Nigerian official said Taylor is now demanding that a war crimes court in neighbouring Sierra Leone drop charges against him before he leaves the country. Taylor's latest demand comes just a day after the first contingent of West African troops arrived in Liberia to oversee his departure. Nigerian soldiers arrived by...

Angry Sierra Leoneans jeer Sankoh's body August 02, 2003, 09:27 PM Hundreds of angry Sierra Leoneans turned out in the capital Freetown today to jeer the body of former rebel leader Foday Sankoh, a man reviled for launching one of Africa's most horrific wars. "Take his body to hell or give it to us, the crowd, to burn his body to ashes," shouted Dowu Johnson, a woman in the crowd. The former warlord, who had been indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed court investigating atrocities during the West African nation's decade-long civil war, died in hospital on Tuesday. His...

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - Foday Sankoh, an indicted Sierra Leone war criminal whose rebel forces were notorious for hacking off the limbs, lips and ears of civilians, died in U.N. custody at a Freetown hospital, the war-crimes court said Wednesday. He was 65. Sankoh died late Tuesday, said David Hecht, spokesman for the U.N.-Sierra Leone war crimes court. No cause of death was given, but Sankoh reportedly suffered a mild stroke after his capture in early 2000 and had been ill and disoriented. The court's chief prosecutor, American David Crane, said Sankoh's death from natural causes granted him "a peaceful...

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 ...

The African Lion Roars in the Western ChurchAnglican liberals are fretting, conservatives rejoicing, and all are scrambling to their history books: whence this new evangelical force on the world scene?By Chris Armstrong | posted 06/27/2003 Five summers ago, the lion of African Anglicanism roared. This week, it has bared its claws.The summer of 1998 saw the every-ten-years Lambeth Conference of the worldwide Anglican communion absorbed with issues of human sexuality. At its meetings, African Anglicans led a campaign against the liberalizing of the church's teachings on homosexuality.Joining in the African "roar" was Bishop John Rucyahana of Shyira, Rwanda, who issued...

<p>July 10, 2003 -- AS the president and Pentagon ponder whether to send U.S. troops to Liberia, many Americans will be surprised to learn that the crisis there was in part the creation of a U.S. political leader who claims to champion Africans' right to self-governance: Jesse Jackson.</p>

Charles Taylor Defends SankohBy Tom Kamara Not many individuals emerge from the gallows and become vice presidents in charge of diamonds. But Sierra Leone's ruthless rebel veteran Foday Sankoh, whose trademark for political power includes amputating limbs of babies, is not one of the few, and there is every indication that his political fortunes are just beginning. Trusted ally and backer Charles Taylor, President of neighboring Liberia, reacting to world-wide condemnation of the rebels for the havoc they have caused in ten years - with over 50,000 dead, has challenged the RUF critics: "He who's without sin must cast the...

July 7 — By David Clarke MONROVIA (Reuters) - A U.S. military team flew into Liberia on Monday to look at how best to bring stability to the broken West African country as President Charles Taylor prepares for foreign exile. The first group of the humanitarian survey team touched down in a helicopter at the heavily-fortified U.S. embassy in the steamy coastal capital Monrovia. Gun-toting U.S. Marines leapt out in flak jackets and helmets. The 20-member team is seen as a possible precursor to a larger force, which the United States is considering and Liberians are praying will come in...

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) - Thousands of Liberians marched behind an American flag Thursday, imploring President Bush to send troops to help stanch years of bloodshed in their west African nation. About 2,000 demonstrators walked to the U.S. Embassy chanting slogans praising Bush, whose administration Thursday repeated its call for Liberia President Charles Taylor to resign. Taylor, indicted by the United Nations for war crimes, is battling a three-year insurgency to unseat him from power. A few demonstrators stoned cars and brawled with police patrolling the rally, but there were no immediate reports of arrests or injuries. Across town, 300 Taylor...

Sierra Leone junta leader 'dead' Koroma fled the country in January Sierra Leone's former military leader, Johnny Paul Koroma, has been killed in neighbouring Liberia, it has been reported.The chief investigator of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, Alan White, says he has "credible information" that Mr Koroma had been killed. Mr White said he had passed on the information to Mr Koroma's wife Makuta who said she was "shocked to hear of her husband's death" from him. Speaking to journalists, Makuta Koroma said she had been told her husband was reportedly killed in Liberia's Lofa County two...

Rebels in Liberia are reported to have entered the suburbs of the capital, Monrovia, as President Charles Taylor struggles to hold on to power. At the same time, aid workers said thousands of refugees had fled in terror from camps on the outskirts of the city. The refugees were trying to reach the centre of Monrovia despite the army trying to block them, said Ramin Rafirasme, West African spokesman for the World Food Programme. "People are in the street, in the rain. The situation remains very tense in Monrovia. We are very worried by the situation of these people,"...

A couple of days ago, I went to a lunch to celebrate Paul Theroux's new book, "Dark Star Safari: Overland From Cairo to Cape Town." "One of the epiphanies of my trip," he writes, "was the realization that where the mode of life had changed significantly in the Africa I had known, it had changed for the worse." When Theroux and I talked, he observed that he had noticed something very strange in The New York Times in the last couple of days - a short Associated Press story about "966 victims [who] were killed in an April 3 assault...

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. Arrest of Kenyan Exposes Massive Global Arms Trade The East African Africa News February 25, 2002 Monday Kenya L AST WEEKEND'S arrest of Kenyan-born Sanjivan Ruprah, who is alleged to be a part of a major arms smuggling operation to Africa, has brought into the open the extent of the multi-million dollar illegal business. The whereabouts of Bout remain unknown. Some media reports say he is in Moscow, while others say he is in the Congo or the United Arab Emirates. An international ...

WASHINGTON - As the United States searches the earth for links between the Al Qaeda terrorist network and its sources of financial and logistical support, reports from West Africa are connecting Osama bin Laden to the collapsed states of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Al Qaeda has raised and laundered tens of millions of dollars through the purchase and sale of illicit diamonds mined by rebel forces in Sierra Leone. The mining and sale of these gemstones - known as "conflict diamonds," because of the financial incentive they provide to combatants - have ...

President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone has named a new 22-member cabinet following his landslide victory in last week's parliamentary and presidential polls. He replaced the people holding key foreign, interior and finance posts, while keeping for himself the defence portfolio, and appointed three women ministers. The new Vice President, Solomon Berewa, has given up his Justice Ministry portfolio - a move which correspondents say will please donors and human rights groups who are wary of too much power being concentrated in one person's hands. Contrary to expectations, the new cabinet includes neither political opponents nor former rebels who...

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah appeared headed for a landslide victory in Sierra Leone's first election since the end of a brutal civil war, widening his substantial lead by two more districts in vote-counting Saturday. With 12 of 14 districts accounted for, Kabbah had 66 per cent of Tuesday's vote in the West African country while his nearest challenger among eight contenders, Ernest Koroma, held 25 per cent. However, the vote-counting was postponed indefinitely after the chief of the National Electoral Commission, Walter Nicol, said there were problems in the two districts where results were still...