WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-02-22 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
By Christopher Thompson
London – A British human rights worker accused of espionage in Angola was released from jail on Wednesday but ordered not to leave the south-western African nation, an official with her sponsoring organisation said.
Sarah Wykes, an anti-corruption campaigner with Global Witness who was in Angola to investigate transparency in its oil sector, was set free after posting bail of 180 000 Angolan kwanzas following a court appearance in Cabinda.
The activist had spent the past three nights in a local prison after being arrested by police in her hotel in the oil-rich Angolan enclave two days after her arrival there.
“The conditions of her bail mean she can’t leave the country unless she gets permission from the public minister in Cabinda,” said Gavin Hayman, a spokesperson for London-based Global Witness.
Hayman added Wykes planned to pick up her passport at a police station in the provincial capital Cabinda and then fly back to the Angolan capital Luanda to seek advice from the British consulate.
British officials have been discussing Wykes’ case with their Angolan counterparts since shortly after her arrest.
The activist, who arrived in Luanda on February 11 and then travelled to Cabinda later the same week, is accused of violating the country’s national security.
The charge could cover anything from meeting banned groups to taking pictures of sensitive installations, such as oil refineries.
Global Witness, which has described the charges against Wykes as baseless, said it was concerned her case could take months or even a year to be resolved. It added that it hoped Angola’s government would decide to let Wykes leave the country.
Angola tends to take a dim view of foreign activists, especially when they are perceived to be meddling in Cabinda, a former Portuguese protectorate that is seen as critical to Angola’s economic development.
Separated from the rest of Angola by a small strip of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cabinda accounts for between 50 percent and 65 percent of the estimated 1.4 million barrels of oil produced each day in the southwestern African nation.
It was incorporated into Angola after independence from Portugal in 1975, a move that triggered a 31-year war with rebels who did not want to fall under the control of central government based in the capital Luanda.
An umbrella group of Cabinda rebel factions signed a peace agreement with the government in August, but tensions linger.
Angola, sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest petroleum producer after Nigeria, is frequently accused of having one of the world’s most corrupt oil sectors, with large portions of revenue unaccounted for each year.
An estimated $4.2-billion “disappeared” from the Angolan treasury between 1997 and 2002, according to a 2004 report from the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch.
Luanda, however, has refused to bow to Western demands that it make its economy more transparent, turning instead to China for the credit and loans to reconstruct after a devastating 27-year civil war that ended in 2002.
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>