DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Unidentified assailants killed at least 40 soldiers during an overnight attack on a military base in the country’s west, Chad’s presidency said Monday.
President Mahamat Deby Itno visited the base in Barkaram, an island in Chad's Lake region, early morning and announced the launch of a military operation to track the assailants, according to a statement from the presidency.
Chad has long battled with an insurgency in the country’s west, near the border with Nigeria.
It was not immediately known who was behind the latest attack, but previous attacks in the region have been blamed by the government on the Boko Haram militant group.
In March, an attack the government blamed on Boko Haram killed seven soldiers, reviving fears of violence in the Lake Chad area, after a period of peace following a successful operation launched in 2020 by the Chadian army to destroy the extremist group’s bases there. Schools, mosques and churches reopened and humanitarian organizations returned.
Boko Haram, which launched an insurgency more than a decade ago against Western education, seeks to establish Islamic law in Nigeria’s northeast. The insurgency has spread to West African neighbors including Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
Chad, a country of nearly 18 million people, has been reeling from political turmoil before and after a controversial presidential election that resulted in Deby Itno’s victory. He had led the country as interim president during the period of military rule that followed the death of his father in 2021.
FILE - Chadian President Mahamat Deby Itno participates in his inauguration ceremony in N'djamena, Chad, Thursday, May 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Mouta Ali, File)
LONDON (AP) — The founder of the far-right English Defense League was sentenced Monday to a year and a half in prison for violating a court order barring him from repeating libelous allegations against a Syrian refugee.
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, admitted in Woolwich Crown Court that he was in contempt of court for violating a 2021 court injunction by giving interviews broadcast on YouTube, a podcast and in a documentary he presented during a rally in London's Trafalgar Square in July that was also posted on his X account and widely viewed.
Justice Jeremy Johnson said Robinson’s breaches of the injunction were not “accidental, negligent or merely reckless” but a “planned, deliberate, direct, flagrant breach of the court’s orders.”
“Nobody is above the law. Nobody can pick and choose which injunctions they obey and those they do not," Johnson said. “It is in the interests of the whole community that injunctions are obeyed.”
Robinson had been ordered not to repeat false allegations that a teen, Jamal Hijazi, had bullied and threatened other students at school. Hijazi successfully sued him for libel and was awarded 100,000 British pounds ($130,000) in damages.
Robinson violated the injunction 10 times since 2023, including by airing a documentary, titled “Silenced,” he made on the case that has been viewed more than 44 million times.
Attorney Aidan Eardley, on behalf of the Solicitor General, said that disobeying a court order created a risk that others might not respect court orders.
“The harm here is that millions of people see Mr. Yaxley-Lennon thumbing his nose at the court,” Eardley said.
Robinson, 41, who founded the nationalist and anti-Islamist EDL, is one of the most influential far-right figures in Britain. Thousands of people rallied in support of him on Saturday in central London at a Unite the Kingdom rally that he had planned but wasn't able to attend because he had been jailed.
His supporters packed the gallery in court and crowded outside the courthouse for the hearing.
Robinson, who stood in the dock in a gray suit and white shirt, looked at the dozens of people in the gallery and shrugged his shoulders as the sentence came down.
Robinson was jailed Friday on a warrant issued after he failed to appear for the court contempt hearing in July and left the country.
While he was out of the country — in Cyprus for at least part of his time away — he was blamed for using his social media presence to stir up protests that turned into a week of rioting across England and Northern Ireland this summer. The demonstrations turned violent after social media users falsely identified the suspect in a stabbing rampage that killed three young girls in the seaside community of Southport as an immigrant and a Muslim.
Robinson has been jailed in the past for assault, contempt of court and mortgage fraud.
He was banned from Twitter in 2018, but he was allowed back after Elon Musk took over the social network and later renamed it X. He now has 1 million -followers.
A court artist drawing by Elizabeth Cook of political activist Tommy Robinson, right, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, appearing at Woolwich Crown Court where he has been sentenced to a year and a half in prison for contempt of court for violating an order barring him from repeating libelous allegations against a Syrian refugee in London, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP)
FILE - British far-right activist Tommy Robinson speaks during a rally in Parliament Square after the final leg of the "March to Leave" in London, Friday, March 29, 2019. (AP Photo/ Frank Augstein, File)
