African press review 28 January 2014

Politics in Egypt, and the hearing into the Westgate shopping centre killings in Nairobi are among the subjects in today's papers...

The main story in this morning's Egypt Independent has the Morsi-era Justice Minister Ahmed Mekky warning the next president of Egypt against allowing the army to engage in political activities, saying this could lead to the president's fall and the collapse of the state itself.

According to Mekky, military rule not only means that the president comes from a military background, but it also includes allowing the military effective control of the government.

"Most of the countries in which the army intervened to work in politics collapsed and their armies collapsed with it, as happened in Greece, Argentina and Burma," Mekky explained.

The statement from the former Justice Minister came on the day the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces approved the bid by armed forces chief, Field Marshal Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, to run for the presidency.

Further down the front page of the Egypt Independent, it's reported that the central Cairo attorney general has ordered the detention of 119 Muslim Brotherhood members for 15 days pending investigation of charges of assault in Muski during the third anniversary celebrations of the 25 January revolution.

The suspects are also charged with joining a banned group, organizing a demonstration without notifying authorities, resisting authorities, blocking roads and disrupting traffic.

Clashes between police and anti-military rule protesters on the third anniversary of the 25 January revolution left at least 62 people dead.

In Uganda, the main story in the Kampala-based Daily Monitor carries a message from President Yoweri Museveni to the nation's judiciary.

According to The Monitor, Museveni has warned judges against provoking him by granting bail to suspected criminals, including those facing treason charges.

Citing the case of Bubulo West MP Tony Kipoi, who was granted bail but fled the country after he was charged with treason, President Museveni said such actions could push the army into shooting suspects once they were re-arrested.

The president was speaking at the opening of the 16th annual judges conference in Entebbe yesterday.

There was a heated dispute yesterday at the hearing into last year's Westgate shopping centre hearing, in Nairobi.

The circumstances surrounding the killing of one of the terrorists in the 21 September attack generated an exchange of questions between the defence and a senior police officer who led part of the operation during the attack in which over 67 people were killed and several others injured.

Deputy County Police Commander Moses Ombati in his testimony on Monday told court that a few hours after the attack police killed one of the terrorists and recovered an AK47 rifle from the second floor.

Ombati told the court that during the rescue operation they encountered one of the terrorists hiding between mattresses and killed him after he shot and killed one officer and seriously injured five others.

But he made no reference to that killing in a statement he recorded outside the central Nairobi shopping centre on 24 September, just three days after the attack.

It was suggested to the court by one defence lawyer that there was total chaos in the shopping centre as the army tried to take over the operation from the police, and that the dead police officer was accidentally killed by a Kenyan Defence Forces soldier, not by a terrorist.

The same attack features in sister paper, The Daily Nation. But the Nation chooses to emphasise the fact that Kenyan security agencies ignored two warnings of an impending terrorist attack before the Westgate massacre.

One of the warnings was issued just 19 days before the attack on 21 September last year, and the other at the beginning of August. Police did not move to secure the identified targets.

The main story in The Daily Nation looks to Nigeria where at least 74 people have been killed and scores others injured in two separate attacks in the north east.

22 people were killed in an attack on a church In Waga Chakaa village in Adamawa state while 52 others were killed in a busy market place on Sunday.

Both attacks have been blamed on Boko Haram.