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African press review 11 October 2013

Tutu lashes African leaders for threatening to walk out of the ICC. Kenyatta alleges witnesses have been bullied and bribed. Nigeria wants Sani Abacha's ill-gotten millions. And hope in the fight against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

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We open with comments on the expected withdrawal from the International Criminal Court statute by members of the African Union in protest against the court's prosecution of Kenyan leader Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto.

South Africa’s BusinessDay newspaper publishes an appeal by Nobel laureate Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu urging partners of global campaign organisation Avaaz to sign a petition against the move.

There are 34 African states that are party to the Rome Treaty creating the court according to the Johannesburg newspaper.

It reports that Tutu has called for Nigeria and South Africa to speak out on behalf of the ICC and its role on the continent, hailing the work done by the court in Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya "in bringing hope to those terrified by the armies, militias and madmen that have waged war against the innocent".

In Zimbabwe, the Herald highlights remarks by South Africa’s International Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana Mashabane, expressing Pretoria’s plans to support any decision reached in Addis Ababa on the continent’s membership to the tribunal. It notes that Africans account for 34 of the 122 signatories of the Rome Statute.

Several African leaders accuse the tribunal of unfairly targeting only Africans.

In Kenya the Nation reports that President Uhuru Kenyatta has moved to have the ICC case against him stopped citing “serious, sustained and wide-ranging abuse on the process".

According to the paper, Kenyatta alleges that his witnesses have been intimidated or interfered with to change their testimony “for reward”. It underlines that in an application made late Thursday the Kenyan president’s defence team petitioned the judges to either stop the case permanently or hold a hearing where the issue will be resolved conclusively before his trial begins on 12 November.

As the ICC reiterated on Thursday that international law does not exempt a sitting president from prosecution, Standard Digital reports a new twist in the case. Charges by the lawyer of Deputy President William Ruto that the Mungiki sect and its boss Maina Djenga backed the Orange Democratic Movement leader and ex-prime minister Raila Odinga during the 2007 general elections.

Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper says that the federal government has fast-tracked its campaign to recover 185 million dollars of ill-gotten wealth hidden by the late military leader Sani Abacha in Liechstenstein, 15 years after his death. The paper says that the funds originated essentially from bribes paid by Germany’s Ferrostaal AG for the construction of an aluminium smelter in Nigeria. Liechtenstein’s constitutional court ordered the confiscation of the funds in 2012 and dismissed a final appeal by companies linked to the Abacha family in March, clearing the way for the restitution of the funds, according to Vanguard.

British researchers have announced a breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases, according to the Mail and Guardian.

The paper says that the scientists successfully tested an orally administered enzyme called Perk in mice and that it prevented the death of brain cells, which plays a common role in these tragic disorders. The outstanding achievement by the University of Leicester team is published in Thursday’s issue of the US journal Science Translational Medicine. Mail and Guardian reports that, while the scientists are hugely buoyed by the success, they expect many more years of tests before putting the drug in the market.

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