UN head calls for end to use of mercenaries
of people forced to flee their homes. He said mercenary activities have ‘‘evolved over the years,’’ pointing to ‘‘illicit activities and trafficking by terrorist and mercenary groups’’ operating in Africa’s vast Sahel region and the alleged involvement of mercenaries in postelection violence in Ivory Coast in 2010.
Mercenaries and other foreign fighters have also committed ‘‘innumerable violations’’ of human rights and international humanitarian law against civilians in the Central African Republic, and mercenaries have suppressed herders trying to move along traditional routes on the border with Cameroon, Guterres said.
Rwandan Foreign Minister Richard Sezibera, whose country is the current chairman of the African Union, said mercenaries are not only involved in ‘‘active combat’’ but ‘‘we now see an increase in cyberattacks and industrial espionage carried out by mercenary groups in the comfort of their own homes.’’
–AP Liam Neeson says he once roamed the streets in pursuit of a black person to murder after a close friend of his disclosed that she had been raped by a (different) black person.
The actor recalled this ‘‘awful’’ impulse during a recent press junket for Cold Pursuit, the latest film in which he plays a wronged man seeking revenge.
‘‘I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody – I’m ashamed to say that – and I did it maybe for a week, hoping some ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know?’’ Neeson told the Independent’s Clemence Michallon in an article published yesterday.
‘‘So that I could ... kill him.’’ Michallon noted that she, Neeson and his co-star Tom Bateman all acknowledged that this was a ‘‘distressing admission,’’ which Neeson volunteered out of the blue.
The Taken star said the impulse lasted about a week and a half before he realised it ‘‘was horrible, horrible.’’
After Bateman reacted with a concise ‘‘Holy s---,’’ Neeson brought up his upbringing in Northern Ireland during a decades-long period of violence called the Troubles: ‘‘I knew a couple guys that died on hunger