Bomb suspects appear in court

A group of 17 people appeared in court on Tuesday in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, charged with planting home-made bombs in the offices of the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, news agencies reported. At least three small bombs went off in different offices of the party in the city on Saturday 25 August, after Muslim-led street demonstrations the day before, causing some damage but no casualties. The Tanzanian authorities were shaken by the eruption of violence in Dar es Salaam on 24 August, when riot police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of mainly Islamic protesters demonstrating against the conviction in Morogoro District of 28-year-old Khamis Rajab Dibagula for defaming Christianity. All the defendants charged with bombing the CCM offices were from the semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, the BBC reported on Tuesday, 4 September.

Police were reported to have tightened security in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday, 5 September, as 41 Muslims charged with demonstrating illegally in connection with riots in the city on 24 August were due to appear in court. Muslim extremists had threatened to invade the courtroom in order to secure the detainees’ release, ‘The Guardian’ newspaper reported. The 41 detainees were denied bail at Kisutu court on Wednesday, Magistrate Afumwisye Kibona saying that several incidents related to the suspects had contributed to an “unusual atmosphere” prevailing in Dar es Salaam. Among those, he said, was the distribution of leaflets advocating the decapitation of the judge who presided over the case of Khamis Rajab Dibagula in Morogoro, Radio Tanzania reported.

Dar es Salaam residents had been bracing themselves for clashes last Friday, 31 August, as Muslim zealots - or shady (unnamed) political forces taking advantage of the situation, according to some reports - had threatened to stage demonstrations with a view to securing the release of the 41 people detained after the earlier clashes. Severe warnings by police and senior politicians, as well as calls for calm by religious leaders, seemed to have persuaded would-be demonstrators not to appear, and neither did reported threats to disrupt Christian church services on Sunday come to anything, according to Dar es Salaam residents.
[for related IRIN stories go to: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/archive/tanzania.phtml]