For the first time France has prosecuted Somali pirates who seized French citizens

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PIRACY CRISIS

Marine violence

Losing battle

Q&A: Prosecuting pirates

Somali piracy: Global map

A French court has jailed five Somali men for between four and eight years for hijacking a yacht and taking a French couple hostage.

The incident took place in the Gulf of Aden in September 2008.

A French navy team raided the vessel, Carre d'As, two weeks later, killing one captor and detaining the others.

A sixth man was acquitted. It is France's first prosecution of suspected Somali pirates.

The prosecutors had asked for the men, now aged between 21 and 36, to be sent to jail for between six and 16 years.

They were charged with hijacking, kidnapping and armed robbery after seizing the boat and its crew.

They were accused of attacking the Carre d'As on 2 September 2008 and demanding a ransom of $2m (£1.3m; 1.5m euros) for the release of French couple Jean-Yves and Bernadette Delanne, both aged 60.

Leniency urged

A lawyer for one of the defendants said his client was a fisherman who had been forced to take part in the attack because he was a seafarer.

Another lawyer said the organisers of the attack were still at large.

The pirates had demanded a ransom of $2m to free the French couple

Defence lawyers urged the court to show leniency, saying sentences of up to 16 years were disproportionate to the crime, as the Somalis did not have “blood on their hands”.

“This is the first time since the 18th century that this country has judged a case of piracy,” defence lawyer Cedric Alepee said, noting that the accused did not have “wooden legs, parrots on their shoulders or eye patches”.

The case was heard in a Paris court for minors because one of the defendants was a minor at the time of the attack.

As the trial came to a close, the defendants apologised to and exchange handshakes with the Delannes. One wished them long lives, while another asked for their forgiveness.

“Good luck,” Bernadette Delanne said.

Jean-Yves Delanne, who is known by the nickname Captain Haddock for his salty sea-dog appearance, said he thought justice had been done.

“I hope piracy is stamped out,” he said, “but this isn't going to change the way things are. The West should do more to help.”

Somali suspects in three other French piracy cases are awaiting trial. Six men will go to court next May, charged in connection with the April 2008 hijacking of the luxury yacht, Le Ponant, and holding its crew of 30 hostage.

The International Maritime Bureau has said that better policing and improved security have reduced successful hijackings by Somali pirates this year.

Nevertheless, attacks linked to Somalia made up more than half the piracy incidents reported worldwide.

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Will the elections, starting on Monday, heal or inflame Egypt's divisions?

When President Hosni Mubarak was forced from office, the prospect of a democratic election was almost unbearably exciting for those Egyptians. There were plenty of them who could not wait to get on with the future.

But now it is happening, many of the people who fought hardest to end the old regime are approaching the election with severe misgivings.

Some Tahrir Square veterans want the election to be postponed. The atmosphere created by the bloodshed of the last week has, they argue, made a fair poll impossible. To add to the confusion, others are saying that the elections are not going to be cancelled so they should get on with winning votes.

The liberals and secular activists in Tahrir are being outflanked by a tacit alliance between the military council and the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest political movement. The Brotherhood says it sympathises with the people in the square but has not joined them. It does not want anything to disturb the progression towards elections, which it expects will give it a dominant position in the parliament that will write Egypt's new constitution.

The support that Egyptians gave the uprising against President Mubarak has not been transferred automatically to the people who have reoccupied Tahrir Square. Callers to radio phone-ins have directed a lot of criticism at them.

Some of the callers have identified themselves as members of the “party of the couch”, the Egyptian term for the silent majority who prefer to stay at home than demonstrate. Their role in the election could be decisive. One woman told a phone-in that Tahrir was Egypt's new dictator. She claimed to be a typical member of the couch party, and warned that her opinion still mattered.

The generals appear to believe that the couch party is on their side. If so, it will be hard for secular liberals to argue with the will of the people.

The Tahrir protesters can pull in big crowds. They will not buckle. The generals are determined to protect their institution, which they believe sustains and protects the country.

It is a recipe for more conflict.

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Egypt's Revolution

Arab unrest: As it happened

Polls pose daunting challenge

Rival protests, opinions

How dangerous is tear gas?

Long known for its pyramids and ancient civilisation, Egypt is the largest Arab country and has played a central role in Middle Eastern politics in modern times.

In the 1950s President Gamal Abdul Nasser pioneered Arab nationalism and the non-aligned movement, while his successor Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel and turned back to the West. The protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 put Egypt at the crossroads once again.

Egypt's ancient past and the fact that it was one of the first Middle Eastern countries to open up to the West following Napoleon's invasion have given it a claim to be the intellectual and cultural leader in the region. The head of Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque is one of the highest authorities in Sunni Islam.

A popular uprising in January-February 2011 forced President Mubarak from power

But the historic step by President Anwar Sadat to make peace with Israel in the 1979 Camp David agreement led to Egypt being expelled from the Arab League until 1989, and in 1981 Mr Sadat was assassinated by Islamic extremists angry at his moves to clamp down on their activities.

President Hosni Mubarak then took a more moderate line, but Islamic groups have continued their campaigns sporadically. They have been responsible for deadly attacks that have often targeted tourists and resort areas, and more recently have begun to target Egypt's Coptic Christian community.

Campaigners for political reform have become more vocal in recent times and have taken to the streets in defiance of an emergency law, in force since 1967, apart from an 18-month interruption in 1981.

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At a glance

Politics: President Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February 2011 amid widespread street protests, handing power to the military. Elections are due in November 2011

Economy: The Egyptian economy is the second largest in the Arab world after Saudi Arabia

International: Egypt has been a key ally of the West; it has played a key role in efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

Widespread anti-government demonstrations in January 2011 – encouraged by the flight of the long-term leader of Tunisia – eventually led President Mubarak to step aside. He was arrested and put on trial in August 2011 over deaths during the demonstrations.

The military is now in charge but have promised to effect a quick transition to democracy. Under continuing pressure from pro-democracy protesters, a new interim government was formed. In March 2011, a series of constitutional changes paving the way for early elections were approved.

But a key demand of the revolutionaries – the lifting of Egypt's emergency law – has not been fulfilled.

Egypt's teeming cities – and almost all agricultural activity – are concentrated along the banks of the Nile, and on the river's delta. Deserts occupy most of the country.

The economy depends heavily on agriculture, tourism and cash remittances from Egyptians working abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries.

However, rapid population growth and the limited amount of arable land is straining the country's resources and economy.

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KINSHASA, Congo – For the past two days, Chantal Pande has set her alarm for 4:30 a.m., putting on her makeup and arriving before dawn at the polling station where she’s been assigned to vote in Congo’s momentous election.

Each day she waited from first light until nightfall, queuing at one of the 485 vote centers that as of Wednesday still had not received ballots in this giant nation attempting to organize its first election since the end of its civil war.

The government failed to print enough ballots, and even those that were printed were not delivered in time, causing millions of voters to be turned away.

“I want to vote. I made my choice and I want to express it. It’s my right,” said the unemployed mother of four, who sat inside a deserted polling station clasping a yellow purse in which she had carefully folded her voting card. “I’ve been here everyday since 5. I’m discouraged. I’m losing hope. Do you think they’ll bring the ballots?”

Already four of the 11 presidential candidates have called for the vote to be annulled. And in numerous rural areas, poll workers have been attacked and voting centers have been set on fire. Riot police have fought back angry mobs with tear gas including outside the cinderblock school where Pande is registered.

The vote that began Monday is the first to be organized by the Congolese government instead of the international community. The election was supposed to mark another step toward peace, but if the results are not accepted by the population analysts fear it could drag Congo back into conflict.

Observers say they have documented irregularities and possible instances of attempted fraud, but that it’s too early to say whether these anomalies are widespread enough to change the election’s outcome.

John Stremlau, who is helping lead The Carter Center’s election observation mission, said the candidates were jumping the gun by calling for an annulment.

“It’s too early to say what the pattern looks like. You don’t want to be driven by anecdotes,” he said. “Is it systemic? Or is just bad management? At the moment, it would appear to be the product of a rushed election with enormous complexity.”

Congo’s election has been a massive logistical challenge: The nation is as large as Western Europe, only 2 percent of the roads are paved, and ballot boxes needed to be transported by foot on the heads of porters.

Especially worrying, though, is the inflammatory rhetoric of opposition leaders who are already calling the vote fraudulent.

On Wednesday, another three candidates signed a statement calling for the vote to be annulled, joining politician Vital Kamerhe, the former speaker of parliament who issued a public letter demanding the ballot be canceled.

Election commission president Daniel Ngoy Mulunda said that more than 99 percent of voting districts had functioned normally, and that only 485 out of 61,380 polling stations had been unable to complete voting due to missing ballots.

It might not be a large number overall, but the drama is playing out in places like the Boniface elementary school, a cinderblock structure that serves as the central voting bureau in one of the capital’s slums.

One of the classrooms’ doors, a section of the school’s wall and the wooden bunks have been destroyed by voters who finally reached the boiling point Tuesday.

A full two days had passed, and porters finally arrived with bundles of ballots on their heads, skirting a pool of black mud that prevented the election commission from coming by car.

The crowd cheered, but when election officials counted what the porters had brought, they found just 600 ballots for 39 voting bureaus — an amount equal to 15 ballots for each polling station that is supposed to serve 300 registered voters.

The president of the voting district, Jacques Kabombo, came out to explain to the crowd that they could not start voting since they would run out of ballots immediately.

He says that in the scuffle that ensued, he thought he was going to get lynched.

“Every time I called the election commission, they said wait _no wait. It’s coming, it’s coming,” he said. “The people rebelled. They pulled apart the wall of the school with their hands. I even lost the shoes on my feet.”

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Associated Press writers Saleh Mwanamilongo in Kinshasa, Congo, and Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.

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MINNEAPOLIS – American universities send tens of thousands of students to study abroad every year, thrusting them into one of the most exciting periods of their lives with a heavy dose of maternal advice: Mix with the locals, but be careful. Don’t get in any tight spots. Avoid protests.

It’s practical guidance that can be forgotten in the heady political ferment in countries like Egypt, where three American students were recently arrested near demonstrations at Tahrir Square.

The Americans made it safely home, but only after an ordeal they said lasted several days and included being struck, forced to lay for hours in the dark and threatened with guns. It’s an experience schools and other students say they try very hard to avoid, balancing personal safety against the desire to engage with the culture that drew them in the first place.

Wittney Dorn, 20, from Appleton, Wis., said she traveled to Egypt because she wanted to study Arabic at the American University in Cairo. In an email Tuesday, the political science major wrote of “the beautiful change” she is seeing as her Egyptian classmates talk about voting for the first time. She said she could understand the urge to get nearer the protests.

“I think the temptation is there, to wrap up in a keffiyeh and try to look like any other Egyptian revolutionary, to feel a little exhilaration from a kind of danger you don’t get in America,” Dorn wrote.

But she said she wouldn’t be doing that. More than 40 protesters were killed, mostly in Cairo, during clashes with police last week and nearly 900 more died in the uprising earlier this year that ousted Hosni Mubarak from power.

“It’s not a brilliant idea to go exploring an area where people are being killed, despite how tempting it may be to watch history unfold before one’s eyes,” wrote Dorn, a student from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.

A survey earlier this month from the nonprofit Institute of International Education found more than 270,000 U.S. students studied abroad during the 2009-10 school year, up about 4 percent from a year earlier. The great majority went to western Europe: Britain, Italy, Spain and France. But the survey found increasing numbers in less traditional destinations; Egypt hosted 1,923 Americans, up 8 percent.

“A lot of students are trying to find places that will help them understand the emerging world,” said Peggy Blumenthal, who oversees research at the institute. They are preparing for careers in public health, the sciences and national security, for example, she said.

Many universities and study abroad program coordinators have been trying to prod students out of what can become a comfort zone of huddling with their fellow Americans. The push to engage can be broadening in a “safe” country; in a country with a suddenly dicey political situation, it can be hazardous.

Blumenthal said universities give students traveling abroad a fairly standard list of do’s and don’ts, including blending in with the locals, obeying local laws and customs and staying sober. Students should avoid large crowds, seedy areas and steer clear of political events, she said.

“Really, these are not new, these guidelines, but they are even more vigorously stressed now,” she said.

Derrik Sweeney, one of the three Americans arrested Nov. 20, said he had heard just such cautions from the American University and the U.S. State Department. He went to demonstrations anyway — including one in early September and one the Friday before he was arrested.

“I value democracy and liberty, so I wanted to go to those protests more to witness them and to see them than to participate in them,” said Sweeney, a student at Georgetown. “I wanted to see history being made.”

Sweeney, 19, of Jefferson City, Mo., was arrested along with Luke Gates, 21, who attends Indiana University and is from Bloomington, Ind., and Gregory Porter, 19, who studies at Drexel University and is from Glenside, Pa.

Egyptian officials said they arrested the students on the roof of a university building and accused them of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters. Sweeney said it didn’t happen that way; he said he and the other Americans were with a group of protesters on the street near the Interior Ministry and fled when police dispersed the crowd.

Sweeney said he thought he could recognize danger and leave. He acknowledged it “seems kind of silly” now that he didn’t stay away, but he said he doesn’t regret it.

“I would have regretted it if I had gone to Egypt and never had gone to a protest,” he said.

Georgetown hasn’t pulled its other students out of Cairo because the U.S. State Department hasn’t recommended it, spokeswoman Stacy Kerr said, but it has reminded them of policies against getting involved in demonstrations.

Drexel University also isn’t telling its students to return to the U.S., said Daniela Ascarelli, director of the university’s study abroad program. She said the university has spoken with the three students still in Egypt and all of them feel safe and want to stay.

Indiana University urged its two remaining students in Egypt to return to the U.S. One complied, but the other didn’t, telling school officials he felt safe and wanted to finish the semester.

Last January, most schools followed a State Department recommendation to bring the students home as protests first broke out in Egypt.

Alex Hanna, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was in Egypt in February after the unrest began. Hanna did attend protests, saying he was able to fit in because he’s of Egyptian descent.

Hanna said American students who want to lend their support to what they see as a Democratic movement can unwittingly play into the government’s hands, allowing it to use reports of foreign protesters to argue the dissent is being stirred up by outsiders.

“U.S. students going over there can actually hurt the efforts,” he said. “They need to be cognizant of that.”

Katrina Gray, 22, of Madison, Wis., was finishing a year of study in Alexandria, Egypt, when she was evacuated in January. Gray was disappointed to miss “a huge part of history” but said she never considered defying the University of Wisconsin’s order to come home.

“My mother would have killed me,” she said.

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Chris Blank contributed to this report from Jefferson City, Mo., Rich Callahan contributed from Indianapolis and Dinesh Ramde contributed from Milwaukee.

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