Crime Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Ever since “Rafiki,” the latest film by the acclaimed Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu, screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May, it has been widely praised by foreign critics and directors and even generated some Oscar buzz. But only in the past week have Kenyans been able to see it for themselves. The film centers on a romance between two women. Ezekiel Mutua, chairman of the Kenya Film Classification Board, or KFCB, banned it domestically, saying it was an […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about corruption in various countries around the world. South Korean President Moon Jae-in entered office in May 2017 pledging to crack down on rampant corruption, in a country where political leaders often enjoy cozy relations with the business elite. But his push to reform South Korea’s giant conglomerates, known as chaebols, has stalled amid weak economic performance and a high-profile rapprochement with North Korea. In an email interview with WPR, Park Sang-in, professor of economics and public administration at Seoul National University, discusses the Moon administration’s efforts to address the […]

BRUSSELS—One morning in November 2015, Ahmed Khaddine, then 25, was in his apartment in central Brussels, typing away on his computer at his desk, when the front door flew open. Before he really knew what was happening, two policemen burst in, grabbed him, pushed his face down onto the wooden floor and handcuffed him before taking him to the police station. For Ahmed, a son of Moroccan immigrants who was born and raised in Brussels, the arrest had been a long time coming. Many years earlier, during his final years of high school, he had begun attending a local mosque […]

GUATEMALA CITY—It looked like a modern-day re-enactment of the 1982 photograph of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt and other military officers at a press conference following their coup. On Aug. 31, military, police and special forces officers lined up several rows deep behind Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, who announced the government’s decision not to renew the mandate of a United Nations-backed anti-corruption body, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG. Although it has been widely praised internationally for exposing deep-seated networks of corruption within the highest levels of the Guatemalan government, bringing down several politicians […]

As the nationalist, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats claimed their best result yet in Sweden’s parliamentary elections last Sunday, the nation’s newspapers went bold with their headlines. “Chaos,” read the front pages, in all caps, of the two largest tabloids. Dagens Industri, a financial newspaper, called the outcome “a political earthquake.” But the subject of their worry was not the rise of the Sweden Democrats, the latest party to surf Europe’s anti-establishment populist wave. Instead, it was the utter fragmentation of the country’s political landscape. That few focused their attention on the far-right party’s performance—it gained seats but still came in third […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. When Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who served as president of Angola for nearly four decades, confirmed last year that he would not run for another term, many expected him to continue wielding power behind the scenes. This was especially true after he announced he would stay on as head of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, which has been the ruling party since the oil-rich southern African country attained independence from Portugal in 1975. “He […]

Evidence of ethics violations by President Donald Trump and his inner circle continues to accumulate, with a rash of plea deals, indictments and guilty verdicts broadsiding the White House in recent weeks. But while Americans grapple with what some observers have called the most corrupt presidential administration in U.S. history, a remarkable wave of anti-corruption activism has swept the rest of the globe. In the past three years alone, corruption scandals have led to the ousting of prime ministers in Pakistan and Malaysia, impeachments of presidents in Brazil and South Korea, and resignations of presidents or prime ministers in Guatemala, […]

The resignation last spring of Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who faced impeachment on charges of corruption, brought to power an unlikely figure: Martin Vizcarra, a former governor of the remote region of Moquegua in southern Peru. Vizcarra had been serving concurrently as vice president and ambassador to Canada when he was called back to assume the nation’s highest office. His attempts to tackle systemic corruption in Peru, including calling for a national referendum on several key reforms, have led to a standoff with the country’s Congress, which is controlled by the opposition Popular Force party. In an email interview, […]

Although the Islamic State continues to carry out sporadic attacks in parts of Iraq, the focus across the country has largely turned to post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. Harsh sentences are being meted out to suspected Islamic State militants and their collaborators. The Associated Press reported in March that 19,000 people have been detained or imprisoned on suspicion of connections to the extremist group. Of those, 3,000 have been sentenced to death. Meanwhile, a growing backlog of cases and a dearth of available evidence have stymied efforts to compensate victims. In an email interview, Ali Al-Mawlawi, head of research at the […]