Briefly

LIBERIA

Rebels ate human organs

THE HAGUE — Liberian rebels cooked and ate human innards while serving under warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor, his former deputy testified yesterday at the exiled leader’s war crimes trial.

A member of Mr. Taylor’s presidential guard, Nelson Gaye, “had the habit of eating fellow human beings,” the former vice president Moses Blah told the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a war crimes tribunal in the Hague.

Mr. Blah said Mr. Gaye and his men also cooked human intestines and ate them with cassava. “You could not enter the unit without doing that.”

Mr. Blah, 61, was the 27th witness in the trial of Mr. Taylor, the first head of an African state to be tried by an international court. Mr. Blah briefly led the country in 2003 after Mr. Taylor was forced into exile in Nigeria.

The court hoped his testimony would shed light on Mr. Taylor’s purported support for the former rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which ravaged neighboring Sierra Leone in a 1991-01 civil war, leaving 120,000 dead.

Mr. Taylor has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

SOMALIA

Ethiopian soldiers hand out food

MOGADISHU — Ethiopian soldiers doled out relief food to hungry Mogadishu residents yesterday in an apparent bid to win over some of those opposed to their continued presence in Somalia.

The troops based in southern Mogadishu raised money and bought relief supplies — sorghum and corn — that they distributed to hundreds of Somalis, said Col. Hadgu Tawalu.

Deputy Mogadishu Mayor Abdi Fatah Shaweye welcomed the move as a “very encouraging gesture.”

Ethiopian troops entered Somalia in late 2006 to bolster the feeble Somali transitional government.

Last week, the United Nations said 2.6 million people in Somalia were facing acute food shortages.

EGYPT

Authorities expel Darfur rebels

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities have expelled several Cairo-based leaders of a Darfur rebel group that carried out an unprecedented attack on the Sudanese capital, a security official said yesterday.

“The men were detained [on Tuesday] and then expelled from the country,” the official told Agence France-Presse on the condition of anonymity.

On Saturday, Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels attacked Omdurman, one of three adjacent cities that make up greater Khartoum, marking the first time that decades of regional conflict have been brought so close to the seat of power.

The English-language Sudan Tribune reported that three JEM members had been expelled from Egypt — Ahmed Tugd, Ahmed Sharif and Mohammed Ali.

The Islamist-inspired JEM retains the most powerful military force of the rebel groups fighting pro-government forces in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, even though it has suffered several breakaways since the uprising began in 2003.

From wire dispatches and staff reports