Warlord Harold Keke, accused in the deaths of 50 villagers and hostages, has surrendered to an Australian-led peacekeepers trying to end a civil war in the Solomon Islands, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday.
Downer said that Keke was under arrest and would face a murder investigation.
Last week in talks with a senior Australian diplomat, Keke allegedly admitted that six local missionaries kidnapped by his forces this year had been killed.
Officials say Keke's forces have razed about 15 villages, killed people, and taken hostages for four years. Keke is allegedly responsible for the deaths of up to 50 people this year, and last year boasted of killing a government minister.
"The Guadalcanal militant leader Harold Keke surrendered ... on the Weather Coast of the island of Guadalcanal earlier today," Downer told Australia's Parliament. "A full investigation of crimes including murder allegedly committed by Harold Keke and his group can now proceed."
Keke's surrender sends a "very clear message to other militants" that they now could also hand in their weapons before a three-week gun amnesty ends on Aug. 21, Downer said
Downer said Keke was now on his way to the capital Honiara on an Australian navy ship HMAS Manoora. Keke would be kept in protective custody by the intervention force and receive all the rights accorded under Solomon Islands law. His arrest was made on an outstanding warrant for robbery.
The Australian-led force of 2,000 troops and 300 police arrived in the Solomon Islands in late July to help end widespread lawlessness and corruption that has paralyzed and nearly bankrupted the South Pacific nation in the aftermath of a coup in 2000.
Although a peace deal was brokered late in 2000 and elections restored democracy, Keke had refused to sign the pact.
"For the first time in a long time the Weather Coast can return to peace and stability free from the fear of executions and the village burnings," New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff said. "It is of huge symbolic importance that the rule of law can be restored and Keke and his lieutenants face appropriate charges."
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza was on a plane heading for New Zealand when news broke of Keke's capture.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS