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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...

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.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Zimbabwe's main opposition leader was involved in a plot to assassinate or overthrow Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, a consulting firm with ties to Mugabe's government claimed Wednesday. An official at Dicksen & Madson said he secretly taped a meeting with Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, where they discussed removing Mugabe from power. Tsvangirai was apparently unaware of the firm's connection to the government. The grainy footage was broadcast on Australian television Wednesday night. Tsvangirai told The Associated Press the tape was "contrived." He refused to comment further, but opposition spokesman ...

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe's main opposition leader said Thursday he broke off contact with a Canadian political consultancy firm after it first proposed a plot to "eliminate" President Robert Mugabe. An official at the firm, Dickens and Madson (Canada) Inc., said Wednesday that Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai had hired them to help kill or overthrow Mugabe. The firm said it had secretly videotaped a meeting with Tsvangirai about the plot. Grainy footage of the meeting was broadcast on Australian television Wednesday night and details of the report have been widely publicized in Zimbabwe's state media. The ...

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Government claims that the opposition leader plotted to assassinate President Robert Mugabe have left many Zimbabweans puzzled about how they should vote in next month's hard-fought presidential elections. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has vehemently denied claims his party, the Movement for Democratic Change approached a Canadian political consultancy to arrange a hit. Voters like Caleb Dambiti said the nonstop coverage of the alleged assassination plan in the state-run media has perplexed him. "I don't know what to believe any more. If he did it, why isn't he in jail?" Dambiti said. Mugabe himself, campaigning for the ...

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 denies the allegations Zimbabwe's main opposition leader says he is to face charges of high treason - an offence punishable by death - over an alleged plot to assassinate President Robert Mugabe. Morgan Tsvangirai's lawyer, Innocent Chagonda, said his client was released after being questioned at central Harare police station for two hours and told he would be summoned at a later date. The accusations against Mr Tsvangirai, who heads the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), are based on a mysterious videotape broadcast on Australian television. "The charge was that I had committed treason and that they would like ...

<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>

<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>

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...