Oscar Grant shooting: officer found guilty of involuntary manslaughter

Oscar Grant shooting: officer found guilty of involuntary manslaughter

• Johannes Mehserle shot black 22-year-old in 2009
• Grant's family express disappointment with verdict
Oscar Grant's family, above. John Burris, the family's lawyer, called it a 'compromise verdict'. Photograph: Mike Nelson/EPA

A white police officer who shot dead a black man in a controversial case in Oakland, California, has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

The family of Oscar Grant, the victim, expressed their disappointment with the outcome. They had been hoping for a murder verdict.

Grant, 22, was shot in the back by policeman Johannes Mehserle, 28, while lying on the platform in a railway station on 1 January 2009. Mehserle claimed he had thought he had his Taser in his hand rather than his gun.

The shooting, which was shown on YouTube, led to a riot in Oakland, and there were fears of further trouble if Mehserle had been found not guilty. Police were yesterday deployed in riot gear in case of any outbreaks of violence.

The case has become a cause celebre in the US, with its echoes of the treatment of Rodney King, a black man whose severe beating by police in LA in 1991 was captured on video. The subsequent acquittals of four LAPD officers sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

The verdict means the jury thought Mehserle had been criminally negligent but had not intended to kill Grant.

Mehserle, who is to be sentenced next month, could face anything from five to 14 years in jail.

John Burris, a lawyer representing the family, described it as a "compromise verdict".

"The system is rarely fair when a police officer shoots an African-American male," Burris said. "No true justice has been given."

The trial was held in Los Angeles because of the tension in the Oakland and neighbouring San Francisco over the shooting.

Kagame: A cunning, hi-tech tyrant?

Kagame: A cunning, hi-tech tyrant?

LANKY and soft-spoken, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame portrays himself as a modern-day politician who sees social media as championing democracy and development.


With a website that boasts Twitter, Flickr, podcasts and his own blog, Kagame says the IT revolution has meant there are “few excuses” for political intolerance and poverty.

“There is a global awareness of national events — for example, in China and Iran,” the 53-year-old Rwandan leader said recently.

“These moments in history are captured and diffused in remote corners of the world, even as the events unfold.”

His comments are ironic, as international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders identifies him as a “predator” who attacks press freedom.

“Kagame’s policy is similar to that of China’s — embracing technology but controlling and censoring it,” Reporters Without Borders Africa head Ambrose Pierre told the BBC.
He says the most recent example of this is Rwanda’s decision to block a news website, Umuvugizi, although the authorities deny it.

“Kagame wants control of the mind. You don’t have space to criticise,” Pierre says.
Kagame’s thinking, he says, is shaped by the 1994 genocide which killed more than 800 000 Tutsis — the minority ethnic group to which the president belongs — and moderate Hutus.
“He is convinced that he still has to fight against what happened 16 years ago.

“But there are different ways of dealing with history; to turn the page and to walk towards tolerance — a good example is South Africa,” he says.
But Kagame, who received military training in Uganda, Tanzania and the US, is no Nelson Mandela-like figure.
A refugee in neighbouring Uganda since childhood, he is schooled in conflict.
He was a founding member of current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s rebel army in 1979 and headed its intelligence wing, helping Museveni take power in 1987.

Then he spearheaded the launch of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel movement, which took power in Kigali to end the 1994 genocide.

Once in government, Kagame, who first served as Rwanda’s defence minister and vice-president, backed the rebellion in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo to overthrow President Mobutu Seso Seko’s regime, only to then become embroiled in a new war there that involved six countries.

“Julius Nyerere (Tanzania’s founding president) played an influential role in fashioning his regional outlook, and activist approach to resolving conflicts,” says William Wallis, Africa editor of the London-based Financial Times newspaper.
“This led him to (DR) Congo, just as Tanzania invaded Uganda in the 1970s,” he says.
Kagame plays on the “conscience” of Western powers for failing to intervene to end the genocide, Wallis says.
He also has strong support from the UK and the US, because he has used aid money “more effectively than his African peers”, Wallis says.
Rwanda’s leader has also wooed powerful lobby groups in the US, including Christian evangelicals and businessmen, to keep Washington on side.

“He is extremely cunning,” says Wallis.
Ghanaian analyst Nii Akuetteh, former executive director of Washington-based think-tank Africa Action, says Kagame also has strong ties with the US military.

“Not only was he trained at American military academies (when a rebel leader), but his son is now enrolled at one of them. Kagame has even addressed the cadets there,” Akuetteh says.

“He is one of America’s friendly tyrants, and went into (DR) Congo with its support,” he says.

As peace deals were signed to end the conflict, Kagame increasingly focused on military and economic co-operation with regional countries to secure landlocked Rwanda’s future — and, under his leadership, the East African Community signed a common market protocol to boost trade.

But, as US-based Human Rights Watch researcher on Rwanda Carina Tertsakian says: “This is mostly a trade issue. It benefits all countries.

“(The Rwandan authorities) still control the movement of people closely, and do not hesitate to try and control what’s going on in other countries,” she says.
Kagame’s powerful network of spies has also been accused of planning cross-border assassinations and abductions — a charge Kigali strongly denies.

The most recent incident was last weekend when a group of men broke into the home in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, of exiled Rwandan journalist Dominique Makeli.

He was bundled into a car, before being dumping alongside a road, apparently because they had been spotted.
“We cannot say with 100% certainty that they were from the Rwandan security services, but they spoke Kinyarwandan,” says Pierre.

This attempted abduction came soon after the killing of another journalist, Jean-Leonard Rugambage, in Rwanda and the attempted assassination of a former military general, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, in South Africa last month.
Although Kigali vehemently denies involvement, Tertsakian suspects it is part of a long-running pattern of targeted attacks, including the 1998 assassination in Kenya of Rwanda’s first post-genocide Minister of Interior Seth Sendashonga and the 2003 disappearance from Rwanda of a respected judge and former military officer, Augustin Cyiza.
“He has never been found,” Tertsakian says.
The latest attacks come as Kagame — Rwanda’s de facto ruler since 1994 — prepares to contest the second presidential elections since the genocide in August.
Tertsakian says Kagame will win the election easily, even if the main opposition leaders challenge him.
“Often, the reactions are disproportionate to the threat. It shows an inability to tolerate any level of criticism,” she says.
But one veteran Rwandan observer, who prefers anonymity, told the BBC: “After 16 years of RPF rule, people are asking: Isn’t it time for change?
“Reconciliation between Hutus and Tutsis still hasn’t been achieved.”
He says Kagame is threatened on several fronts, including by the formation of the Democratic Green Party, which is led by Frank Habineza.
He comes from Kagame’s core support base: The previously exiled Tutsis who are now highly influential in Rwandan society.
Two other opposition parties, PS-Imberakuri and FDU-Inkingi, have also emerged, with roots in the majority Hutu ethnic group.

Their respective leaders, Bernard Ntaganda and Victoire Ingabire, have been targeted by police.
Ntaganda has been detained while Ingabire has been charged with denying the genocide.
“If there is a free election, people will vote along ethnic lines. Kagame won’t win,” the observer says.
For the president, it would signal that his biggest political mission — to end the ethnic divisions that caused the genocide — had failed.
And probably this fear, more than any other, is driving him to repel threats to his rule. — BB

Opening the Secret Files on Lumumba's Murder

Opening the Secret Files on Lumumba's Murder

By Stephen R. Weissman


In his latest film, "Minority Report," director Steven Spielberg portrays a policy of "preemptive action" gone wild in the year 2054. But we don't have to peer into the future to see what harm faulty intelligence and the loss of our moral compass can do. U.S. policies during the Cold War furnish many tragic examples. One was U.S. complicity in the overthrow and murder of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

Forty-one years ago, Lumumba, the only leader ever democratically elected in Congo, was delivered to his enemies, tortured and summarily executed. Since then, his country has been looted by the U.S.-supported regime of Mobutu Sese Seko and wracked by regional and civil war.

The conventional explanation of Lumumba's death has been that he was murdered by Congolese rivals after earlier U.S. attempts to kill him, including a plot to inject toxins into his food or toothpaste, failed. In 1975, the U.S. Senate's "Church Committee" probed CIA assassination plots and concluded there was "no evidence of CIA involvement in bringing about the death of Lumumba."

Not so. I have obtained classified U.S. government documents, including a chronology of covert actions approved by a National Security Council (NSC) subgroup, that reveal U.S. involvement in -- and significant responsibility for -- the death of Lumumba, who was mistakenly seen by the Eisenhower administration as an African Fidel Castro. The documents show that the key Congolese leaders who brought about Lumumba's downfall were players in "Project Wizard," a CIA covert action program. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and military equipment were channeled to these officials, who informed their CIA paymasters three days in advance of their plan to send Lumumba into the clutches of his worst enemies. Other new details: The U.S. authorized payments to then-President Joseph Kasavubu four days before he ousted Lumumba, furnished Army strongman Mobutu with money and arms to fight pro-Lumumba forces, helped select and finance an anti-Lumumba government, and barely three weeks after his death authorized new funds for the people who arranged Lumumba's murder.

Moreover, these documents show that the plans and payments were approved by the highest levels of the Eisenhower administration, either the NSC or its "Special Group," consisting of the national security adviser, CIA director, undersecretary of state for political affairs, and deputy defense secretary.

These facts are four decades old, but are worth unearthing for two reasons. First, Congo (known for years as Zaire) is still struggling to establish democracy and stability. By facing up to its past role in undermining Congo's fledgling democracy, the United States might yet contribute to Congo's future. Second, the U.S. performance in Congo is relevant to our struggle against terrorism. It shows what can happen when, in the quest for national security, we abandon the democratic principles and rule of law we are fighting to defend.

In February, Belgium, the former colonial power in Congo, issued a thousand-page report that acknowledged "an irrefutable portion of responsibility in the events that led to the death of Lumumba." Unlike Belgium, the United States has admitted no such moral responsibility. Over the years, scholars (including myself) and journalists have written that American policy played a major role in the ouster and assassination of Lumumba. But the full story remained hidden in U.S. documents, which, like those I have examined, are still classified despite the end of the Cold War, the end of the Mobutu regime and Belgium's confession.

Here's what they tell us that, until now, we didn't know, or didn't know for certain:ï In August 1960, the CIA established Project Wizard. Congo had been independent only a month, and Lumumba, a passionate nationalist, had become prime minister, with a plurality of seats in the parliament. But U.S. presidential candidate John F. Kennedy was vowing to meet "the communist challenge" and Eisenhower's NSC was worried that Lumumba would tilt toward the Soviets.

The U.S. documents show that over the next few months, the CIA worked with and made payments to eight top Congolese -- including President Kasavubu, Mobutu (then army chief of staff), Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko, top finance aide Albert Ndele, Senate President Joseph Ileo and labor leader Cyrille Adoula -- who all played roles in Lumumba's downfall.

The CIA joined Belgium in a plan, detailed in the Belgian report, for Ileo and Adoula to engineer a no-confidence vote in Lumumba's government, which would be followed by union-led demonstrations, the resignations of cabinet ministers (organized by Ndele) and Kasavubu's dismissal of Lumumba.

ï On Sept. 1, the NSC's Special Group authorized CIA payments to Kasavubu, the U.S. documents say. On Sept. 5, Kasavubu fired Lumumba in a decree of dubious legality. However, Kasavubu and his new prime minister, Ileo, proved lethargic over the following week as Lumumba rallied supporters. So Mobutu seized power on Sept. 14. He kept Kasavubu as president and established a temporary "College of Commissioners" to replace the disbanded government.

ï The CIA financed the College and influenced the selection of commissioners. The College was dominated by two Project Wizard participants: Bomboko, its president, and Ndele, its vice-president. Another CIA ally, Lumumba party dissident Victor Nendaka, was appointed chief of the security police.

ï On Oct. 27, the NSC Special Group approved $250,000 for the CIA to win parliamentary support for a Mobutu government. However, when legislators balked at approving any prime minister other than Lumumba, the parliament remained closed. The CIA money went to Mobutu personally and the commissioners.

ï On Nov. 20, the Special Group authorized the CIA to provide arms, ammunition, sabotage materials and training to Mobutu's military in the event it had to resist pro-Lumumba forces.

The full extent of what one U.S. document calls the "intimate" relationship between the CIA and Congolese leaders was absent from the Church Committee report. The only covert action (apart from the assassination plots) the committee discussed was the August 1960 effort to promote labor opposition and a no-confidence vote in the Senate.How did Lumumba die? After being ousted Sept. 5, Lumumba rallied support in parliament and the international community. When Mobutu took over, U.N. troops protected Lumumba, but soon confined him to his residence. Lumumba escaped on Nov. 27. Days later he was captured by Mobutu's troops, beaten and arrested.

What happened next is clearer thanks to the Belgian report and the classified U.S. documents. As early as Christmas Eve 1960, College of Commissioners' president Bomboko offered to hand Lumumba over to two secessionist leaders who had vowed to kill him. One declined and nothing happened until mid-January 1961, when the central government's political and military position deteriorated and troops guarding Lumumba (then jailed on a military base near the capital) mutinied. CIA and other Western officials feared a Lumumba comeback.

On Jan. 14, the commissioners asked Kasavubu to move Lumumba to a "surer place." There was "no doubt," the Belgian inquiry concluded, that Mobutu agreed. Kasavubu told security chief Nendaka to transfer Lumumba to one of the secessionist strongholds. On Jan. 17, Nendaka sent Lumumba to the Katanga region. That night, Lumumba and two colleagues were tortured and executed in the presence of members of the Katangan government. No official announcement was made for four weeks.

What did the U.S. government tell its Congolese clients during the last three days of Lumumba's life? The Church Committee reported that a Congolese "government leader" advised the CIA's Congo station chief, Larry Devlin, on Jan. 14 that Lumumba was to be sent to "the home territory" of his "sworn enemy." Yet, according to the Church Committee and declassified documents, neither the CIA nor the U.S. embassy tried to save the former prime minister.

The CIA may not have exercised robotic control over its covert political action agents, but the failure of Devlin or the U.S. embassy to question the plans for Lumumba could only be seen by the Congolese as consent. After all, secret CIA programs had enabled this group to achieve political power, and the CIA had worked from August through November 1960 to assassinate or abduct Lumumba.

Here, the classified U.S. chronology provides an important postscript. On Feb. 11, 1961, with U.S. reports from Congo strongly indicating Lumumba was dead, the Special Group authorized $500,000 for political action, troop payments and military equipment, largely to the people who had arranged Lumumba's murder.

Devlin has sought to distance himself from Lumumba's death. While the CIA was in close contact with the Congolese officials involved, Devlin told the Church Committee that those officials "were not acting under CIA instructions if and when they did this." In a recent phone conversation with Devlin, I posed the issue of U.S. responsibility for Lumumba's death. He acknowledged that, "It was important to [these] cooperating leaders what the U.S. government thought." But he said he did "not recall" receiving advance word of Lumumba's transfer. Devlin added that even if he had objected, "That would not have stopped them from doing it."

By evading its share of moral responsibility for Lumumba's fate, the United States blurs African and American history and sidesteps the need to make reparation for yesterday's misdeeds through today's policy. In 1997, after the Mobutu regime fell, the Congolese democratic opposition pleaded in vain for American and international support. Since then, as many as 3 million lives have been lost as a result of civil and regional war. The United States has not supported a strong U.N. peacekeeping force or fostered a democratic transition. The collapse in late April 2002 of negotiations between Congolese factions threatens to reignite the smoldering conflict or ratify the partition of the country.

Our government's actions four decades ago in Congo also have special meaning after the tragedy of Sept. 11. They warn that even as we justly defend our land and our people against terrorists, we must avoid the excessive fear and zeal that lead to destructive intervention betraying our most fundamental principles.

Stephen Weissman is author of "A Culture of Deference; Congress's Failure of Leadership in Foreign Policy" (Basic Books). He was staff director of the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Africa from 1986 to 1991.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company