African press review 26 September 2017

Kenyan judges in landmark verdicts hand five victims of police brutality damages worth 240,000 euros, while 3 armed robbers get the death sentence for the theft of pineapples from a farm.

We begin with a ground-breaking verdict from a Kenyan court which ought to serve as a case of jurisprudence for the judiciary in other African countries.

The High Court in Coastal Province ordered the government to pay 240,000 euros to five victims of police brutality.

Daily Nation reports that one of the victims is a former soldier arrested in 1982 in connection with an attempted coup, while the others have been on trial since 1995 after being linked with the outlawed February Eighteen Movement and the Sabaot Land Defence Force.

Justice John Mativo who delivered the verdict at the Millimani High Court ruled that while no monetary award can erase the deprivation of the victims’ dignity, compensating them will go some distance towards vindicating their infringed constitutional rights.

Daily Nation reports that each of the five victims are due to about 40,000 euros adding that Justice Mativo reminded the police of their duty to protect the fundamental rights of citizens under their custody and prevent all forms of atrocities.

Also in Kenya, the Standard has a splash on the shocking saga of three men sentenced to death for an attempted theft of 30 pineapples from a farm in the industrial town of Thika, north-east of Nairobi.

The paper says there was no loss of life during the robbery of the fruit worth 12 euros (Sh1.500), which they abandoned after being chases by a guard dog.

The Standard reports that the Court of Appeal  upheld the verdict first passed by a Magistrates court in Thika in 2008, on the argument that the three were guilty of threatening security guards using machetes and for unlawfully injuring a guard dog.

In Nigeria, the Nation newspaper, leads with an announcement by the country's oil development company that it was working to grow its equity production from 180,000 barrels per day to 300,000 barrels by 2018 and then to 400,000 and 500,000 in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

According to the paper, the statement from the subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation comes as oil prices hit a more than two-year high on Monday.

This was after major producers said the global market was on its way toward rebalancing following threats by Turkey to cut oil flows from Iraq’s Kurdistan region toward its ports.

The Nation reports that November Brent crude future contracts were up $1.51, or 2.5 per cent, at $58.37 a barrel, its highest since July, 2015.

And South Africa, today is Winnie Mandela's 81st birthday and the Sowetan marks the anniversary with the publication of a photo album recounting her extraordinary life marked by her marriage to global icon Nelson Mandela and their insuing bitter divorce.

The paper recalls that the "struggle stalwart" was an icon in her own might rising from an activist to head the African National Congress Women's League, a member of the ANC's National Executive Committee and later as a cabinet minister in several South African governments.