Mr Denard, 70, a self-styled colonel who suffers from an old leg wound, faces life imprisonment if found guilty of killing President Abdallah Ahmed in November 1989. One of Mr Denard's lieutenants at the time, Dominique Malacrino, also faces a murder charge. He was allegedly with Mr Denard when the president was shot five times during an argument in his office. Another lieutenant, Paul Guerrier, is...
Now, far from retreating into the anonymity of well-earned retirement, Colonel Bob Denard is back in the thick of the action. It may not be doing his rabble-rousing reputation much good, but the 71-year-old chien de guerre is reportedly running a nudist camp. "He may not be prancing around with his private parts in the air, but he's involved all right," one unhappy naturist told the daily...
At least five people were killed in the fighting between government troops and the invaders who landed by speedboat on the smallest of the archipelago's three islands, Moheli. An information ministry spokesman said three of the foreign attackers had died. The 20 masked soldiers distributed leaflets accusing the Comoran military leader, Colonel Azaly Assoumani, of links with al-Qaida. They seized the...
a. The passengers were transferred on to the plane that crashed on the final leg from Sana'a to Grand Comoros. Representatives of SOS Voyage aux Comores, a group created a year ago to lobby for better safety on Yemenia routes, said European and US aviation authorities had not been sufficiently concerned about the safety practices of airlines operating outside European or American air space. In Africa,...
s father, Kassim, met her as she arrived, saying he was relieved and overjoyed to see his daughter even as he mourned his wife. "It was very powerful," he said of his reunion with Bahia. He said he asked her: "'How are you? Was the return trip OK?' … We joked a little, the two of us." "I took her in my arms and I embraced her but not too strongly because her collarbone is injured," he said later. Several...
s father, was waiting, as were other members of her family. Bakari, the eldest of four children, had boarded a plane in Paris with her mother, Aziza Bakari, on Monday morning for the long journey via Marseille and Sana'a in Yemen, to Comoros where they planned to spend part of the summer school holidays with relatives. Her three siblings had stayed behind with her father. Earlier Kassim Bakari told...
Aftermath of Yemenia flight IY 626 crash in the Indian ocean with 153 people on board ...
s father, Kassim Bakari, told France's RTL radio in Paris that he had spoken to his daughter, who can barely swim, about the moments after the crash. "She couldn't feel anything and found herself in the water. She heard people speaking around her but she couldn't see anyone in the darkness," he said. "She's a very timid girl, I never thought she would escape like that. "I asked her what happened and...
The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday 2 July 2009 The article below about plane crashes that have left only one person alive, included a 1995 incident in which a plane exploded as it made an emergency landing. It happened near Bogotá, Colombia, not Bogata, Columbia as we had it. 2003 A Boeing 737 crashed shortly after leaving Port Sudan...
flying cattle trucks' A 14-year-old girl may be the sole survivor from an Airbus A310-300 jet from Yemen carrying 153 people that crashed into the Indian Ocean off the Comoros islands early yesterday. Local officials said last night that the girl had been plucked from the sea after the plane went down in bad weather following a second aborted landing attempt at the international airport in Moroni,...
a, the Yemeni capital, before resuming their flight to Comoros capital, Moroni, on the main island of the archipelago. Stéphane Salord, the consul general of the Comoros in the Provence-Alps-Côte d'Azur region of France, said: "There is considerable dismay. "These are families that, each year on the eve of summer, leave Marseille and the region to rejoin their families in the Comoros and spend their...
s pitot tubes, which monitor the speed of the aircraft, may have become blocked and sent inconsistent readings to the primary flight control (PFC) computers while the pilots were trying to navigate through heavy turbulence at 35,000ft. Pilots familiar with the A330-200 have warned that attempting to operate the plane in those conditions without exceeding its speed limit or stalling the engines – both...
s worst air accidents since 1977 30 June 2009: Yemenia Airbus A310 en route to the Comoros islands crashes in the Indian Ocean – 153 people are on board and only one survives, a 14-year-old girl pulled from the sea. 1 June 2009: Air France Airbus A330 runs into thunderstorms over the Atlantic after leaving Brazil and disappears – all 228 people on board are killed. 17 July 2007: Tam Airlines flight...
a, to the main island of Grand Comore, were believed to be Comoros residents returning from Paris. A Yemenia Air official said the plane, which authorities believe crashed in the early hours of the morning, had 142 passengers and 11 crew members on board. A senior government official said it was unclear whether there were any survivors. "The plane has crashed ... we still don't know exactly where,"...
s aides had been arrested, including his justice minister. The AU deployed 1,350 troops to the three spice and perfume-producing islands, which lie 190 miles east of Africa and have a total population of 700,000. Analysts claim the AU was hoping that a relatively easy victory in Anjouan would earn some international prestige to offset its problematic peacekeeping missions in Sudan and Somalia. However,...
s capital, Mutsamudu, and waiting for an attack. A national government statement said the three main towns of Ouani, Mutsamudu and Domoni had been retaken. "These three urban centres are currently under control... For the moment there is no news of the rebellion chief or of his lieutenants." There was no independent confirmation of the captures from Anjouan, where phone lines have been cut. At least...
s most notorious mercenary, was found guilty of staging a 1995 coup in the Indian ocean Comoros islands and given a suspended five-year prison sentence yesterday. Denard, 76, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, was one of several European so-called "dogs of war". He was involved in four coups in the former French colony of Comoros culminating in 1995, when he and 26 accomplices invaded by boat to overthrow...
Peter Pan' priest dies, 71 Monsignor Bryan Walsh, an Irish-born Roman Catholic priest whose Operation Pedro Pan (Peter Pan) brought 14,000 Cuban children to the United States in the early years of Fidel Castro...