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MILITARY

French trial opens amid confusion in Congo

The trial of Joshua French in the Democratic Republic of Congo began in confusion on Tuesday, starting with uncertainty over its location and then grinding to a halt when the court translator was found to be inadequate.

Published: 7 January 2014 08:29 CET
French trial opens amid confusion in Congo
Joshua French (left) and Tjostolv Moland (right) stand in court at their appeal in 2010 - Heiko Junge Scanpix
"No development here surprises me," French said ruefully after the decision was taken to postpone the trial until Friday. "I'm tired of all this now." 
 
According to NRK, the problem with the interpreter were obvious as soon as the trial began.  He  had to pause frequently while he searched for the right words, only being able to continue when interpreters hired by the Norwegian press shouted out the correct translations.
 
"It is such a serious matter that we cannot have a translator who is not adequate," French's lawyer Hans Marius Graasvold, who petitioned the court to have the translator replaced, told NRK. "After just a few minutes it was obvious that the interpreter  was not good enough." 
 
Both Graasvold and diplomats from Norway's Foreign Ministry were notified last night that the trial would take place on Tuesday at the Supreme Military Court in Kinshasa, rather than at Ndolo Prison where French is being held. 

 
But at 8am, just an hour before the trial was due to start, the location was suddenly moved back to a makeshift courtroom at Ndolo. 
 
French, who has joint British-Norwegian citizenship, stands accused of murdering his friend Tjostolv Moland, who was found dead in the cell the two shared in August.  The two had been in prison in Congo since 2009 after being found guilty of murdering their driver Abedi Kasongo. 
 
A joint investigation of Moland's death by Norway's National Criminal Investigation Service and the Congolese police found that Moland had killed himself. But last month, the Congolese authorities reopened the case against French, accusing him of drugging his friend and then strangling him as he slumbered. 
 
This contradicts the findings of  autopsy which NCIS collaborated on, which found alcohol but no drugs in Moland's body. 
 
Top Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide met Congolese President Joseph Kabila on Monday, passing him a letter from Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and British Prime Minister David Cameron. 
 
"We expressed great concern about the situation Joshua French is in," Eide told VG newspaper. "The letter contains an appeal to the President that a way should be found to send French back to Norway."
 
French's mother, Kari Hilde, on Tuesday morning told NRK that she was pleased that the court seemed ready to allow Norway's NCIS to present the findings of the joint autopsy. 
 
"If the NCIS testifies, I think the matter will go well. If they are not allowed to testify then I think we must interpret that as meaning that they have decided to convict Joshua," she said. 
 
Earlier, she called on the British authorities to take more "serious action" in a petition to Cameron presented by the charity Reprieve. 
 
"Joshua has already lost his best friend and nearly five years of his life," she said in a petition t. "Now he's being falsely accused of murder. How much more will he have to endure before the British Government takes serious action?"

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NATO

Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday he would back Sweden's Nato candidacy if the European Union resumes long-stalled membership talks with Ankara.

Published: 10 July 2023 12:35 CEST
Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

“First, open the way to Turkey’s membership of the European Union, and then we will open it for Sweden, just as we had opened it for Finland,” Erdogan told a televised media appearance, before departing for the NATO summit in Lithuania.

Erdogan said “this is what I told” US President Joe Biden when the two leaders spoke by phone on Sunday.

Turkey first applied to be a member of the European Economic Community — a predecessor to the EU — in 1987. It became an EU candidate country in 1999 and formally launched membership negotiations with the bloc in 2005.

The talks stalled in 2016 over European concerns about Turkish human rights violations.

“I would like to underline one reality. Turkey has been waiting at the EU’s front door for 50 years,” Erdogan said. “Almost all the NATO members are EU members. I now am addressing these countries, which are making Turkey wait for more than 50 years, and I will address them again in Vilnius.”

Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, is due to meet Erdogan at 5pm on Monday in a last ditch attempt to win approval for the country’s Nato bid ahead of Nato’s summit in Vilnius on July 11th and 12th. 

Turkey has previously explained its refusal to back Swedish membership as motivated by the country’s harbouring of people connected to the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group, and the Gülen movement, who Erdogan blames for an attempted coup in 2016. 

More recently, he has criticised Sweden’s willingness to allow pro-Kurdish groups to protest in Swedish cities and allow anti-Islamic protesters to burn copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

In a sign of the likely reaction of counties which are members both of Nato and the EU, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the two issues should not be connected. 

“Sweden meets all the requirements for Nato membership,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin. “The other question is one that is not connected with it and that is why I do not think it should be seen as a connected issue.”

Malena Britz, Associate Professor in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University, told public broadcaster SVT that Erdogan’s new gambit will have caught Sweden’s negotiators, the EU, and even Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg off guard. 

“I think both the member states and Stoltenberg had expected this to be about Nato and not about what the EU is getting up to,” she said. “That’s not something Nato even has any control over. If Erdogan sticks to the idea that Turkey isn’t going to let Sweden into Nato until Turkey’s EU membership talks start again, then Sweden and Nato will need to think about another solution.” 

Aras Lindh, a Turkey expert at the Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs, agreed that the move had taken Nato by surprise. 

“This came suddenly. I find it hard to believe that anything like this will become reality, although there could possibly be some sort of joint statement from the EU countries. I don’t think that any of the EU countries which are also Nato members were prepared for this issue.”

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