Free Republic

Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, has rejected accusations from Washington that he was supporting a rebel leader and accused war criminal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by challenging a senior US official to send a drone to kill the wanted man. ... "I told him: 'Assistant secretary of state, you support [the UN peacekeeping force] in the Congo. Such a big force, so much money. Have you failed to use that force to arrest whoever you want to arrest in Congo? Now you are turning to me, you are turning to Rwanda?'" he said. "I said that, since you...

A prominent Obama administration trade advisor is one of the central players in a series of scandals and ethical rows that have reportedly placed him in cahoots with corrupt Congolese warlords and other questionable figures. Kase Lawal, an oil mogul with longstanding ties to the Clinton family, was appointed in 2010 as a member of Obama’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. Since his selection to the trade board, Lawal has become enmeshed in a pact to purchase large quantities of illegal gold from a violent Congolese warlord, according to a U.N. investigation and various reports. The crooked gold...

As the Clinton-led State Department dragged its feet against Boko Haram, Clinton Foundation donors made millions from Nigerian oil fields The attacks on Jan. 20, 2012, began not so much as an explosion but as an earthquake. ....In coordinated bombings at 23 separate locations in the city of Kano, including police headquarters and military barracks, the group left one of Africa’s largest cities in disarray and panic. The January attacks killed more than 185 people—Africa’s worst terrorism since the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. ...Boko Haram often showed up better equipped than the Nigerian military...prominently...

A private jet owned by a North Texas company has been impounded for the past 2 1/2 weeks and its passengers and crew detained by the Congolese government in central Africa, where officials say it was used to smuggle gold from rebel territories in the nation's eastern provinces. The plane was leased by Southlake Aviation, based in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth, to a subsidiary of CAMAC International, The Dallas Morning News reported in its Sunday editions. CAMAC company is owned by Kase Lawal, a Nigerian-born Houston oil tycoon an appointee of President Barack Obama to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy...