Photo: CIO Kenya The African press is mostly interested in the election results in Mali and on the upcoming elections in Zimbabwe. But there are other stories making the headlines today, including a surprising number of trials.
The Kenyan Daily Nation leads with President Uhuru Kenyatta's case at the International Criminal Court (ICC), where his lawyer has filed "confidential" lawsuits against the two leading mobile telephone service providers in the country, Safaricom and Airtel.
The daily says Kenyatta's defence team is seeking access to unspecified information from the two mobile phone companies and has asked the ICC to restrict any access to the cases, particularly by the media.
The applications, which are very rare in the history of the Kenyan courts, were filed and heard behind closed doors. The Nation says its efforts to access the case files have been unsuccessful, as its reporters were barred from entering the public registry's office.
Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, are set to stand trial at the ICC later this year, on charges of crimes against humanity during the 2007-8 post-election violence.
In South Africa there is a new development in a case that has received a lot of media coverage. The Sowetan reports today that charges of rape against an important political figure have been dropped.
Zwelinzima Vavi, the secretary general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) had been accused of rape by a union employee.
Although admitting to the affair with the married woman, Vavi firmly denied raping her, says the paper.
A couple of hours into the initial legal proceedings, the paper says the plaintiff withdrew her accusations and the case was dropped. The Sowetan says the woman might now be facing a criminal investigation herself for allegedly trying to extort money from the Cosatu leader.
A grim story makes the headlines of Nigeria's Punch newspaper, as an award-winning Nigerian music director, Aswad Ayinde, was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in jail for the repeated rape of his daughters.
Ayinde, who is best known for directing the Fugees 1996 hit music video, Killing Me Softly, received a 50-year prison sentence in one of five trials for raping and fathering children with his daughters.
In 2011 Ayinde was already sentenced to 40 years for sexually assaulting another of his daughters, whom the daily reports he also regularly beat and starved.
In a disturbing disclosure, the paper adds that, Ayinde's former wife has defended the accused, saying he was trying to create a "pure family bloodline" by impregnating his daughters.
Back in Kenya the man who attacked British tourists, killing one of them, has been sentenced to death, says the national daily the Standard.
It explains that Ali Babito Kololo, who has been on trial for over a year, proclaimed his innocence and accused the court of running a sham trial as the sentence was read out and translated to him from English to Kiswahili.
Reporting from the court, the paper explains that the accused was found guilty of murder and kidnapping, referring to the 10 September 2011 attack on a tourist resort where David Tebutt was killed and his wife, Judith, kidnapped and taken to Somalia by suspected Al-Shebab militants.
As prescribed by the law, the paper says Kololo was sentenced to be hanged for robbery with violence and to seven years in jail for abduction, presumably not in that order.
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