A Myanmar military tribunal has sentenced 28 people to 20 years in jail with hard labour for arson attacks on two factories, state media reported, after a string of mainly Chinese-financed factories were torched during unrest in Yangon in March. The army-run Myawady news portal said the offenders had targeted a shoe plant and a garment factory in the industrial Hlaing Tharyar suburb of Myanmar’s biggest city. Martial law was imposed in the suburb after the blazes, with dozens killed or wounded when security forces opened fire on anti-military protesters, media and an activist group said. The Chinese embassy in Myanmar said at the time that many Chinese staff were injured and trapped in the arson attacks and called on Myanmar to protect Chinese property and citizens. A total of 32 Chinese-i...
Israeli police on Friday arrested a man for trying to set fire to an east Jerusalem church by the Garden of Gethsemane, the site revered by Christians as the place where Jesus prayed before he was crucified. The 49-year-old Israeli suspect poured flammable liquid inside the Church of All Nations, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. The man then set it alight, a separate police statement said, before the church guard detained him. “Preliminary investigation and the suspect’s details strengthen the assessment that the background to the incident was criminal,” police said, suggesting investigators believed it was not a hate crime. Reuters pictures showed a charred bench and a small blackened portion of the mosaic floor of the Catholic church, which overlooks Jerusalem’s walled Old City. “T...
Two minors and four other suspects were paraded on Monday by police in Ekiti State in connection with arson attacks on three police stations in the State. Suspected hoodlums had last week attacked two Divisional Police Stations and the Area Command office in Ikere Ekiti, Ikere Ekiti Local Government Area in the wake of the #EndSARS protests. The suspects include Odeyemi Sina (12), Ayomide Akomolafe (13), Alao Emmanuel, Ojuko Tobi, Sunday Salihu and Kosedake Olamilekan. Parading the suspects in Ado-Ekiti, on Monday, the police spokesman Mr Sunday Abutu said the minors were arrested at the scene of the incident. ‘When the #EndSARS protest started, everything was done peacefully until the 20th of October when some hoodlums stormed our Area Command in Ikere Divisional Police Station and burnt ...