CAR/DRC: ICC Proceeds Trial Against Congo's Bemba

Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Tuesday removed the last obstacle to start the trial against Congo's former vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bemba, who was also a business tycoon, warlord, and senator, is accused of widespread rapes and sowing terror in the Central African Republic.

Bemba allegedly committed the crimes between October 2002 and March 2003. ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo says Bemba's Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) ordered its militia to rape, murder, torture and plunder while they were in the CAR to support former president Ange-Félix Patassé, who was facing a rebellion by general François Bozizé.

Bemba's lawyers, however, tried to challenge the admissibility of the case, claiming he could not be tried for the same crime twice. Bemba's lawyer Aimé Kilolo Musamba argued that the Bangui Regional Court's Senior Investigating Judge concluded in 2004 that Bemba only sent some troops to the CAR, but that he was not the one responsible for the command. The Bangui prosecutor then decided not to start proceedings.

However, Judge Anita Ušacka explained that both Bangui's Appeals Court and Court of Cassation "expressly reversed the Senior Investigating Judge's order, upheld the charges against Mr Bemba" and ruled that the case against Bemba should be referred to the ICC. She therefore rejected Mr Bemba's reasoning that the ICC was not competent to deal with the case. The trial is now ready to start.

The ICC

Bemba's MLC militia terrorised the Central African Republic with a campaign of looting, attacking civilians and widespread rape in 2002 and 2003. Unable to conduct its own war crimes prosecutions, the CAR government referred the ongoing atrocities to the Prosecutor of the ICC in 2004. The ICC investigations, which started in May 2007, focus on the most serious crimes in the CAR, particularly sexual violence.

In 2003, Belgian judges sentenced Bemba in absentia to one year in prison for human trafficking. Following his arrest in Brussels in 2008, Belgian authorities decided to transfer him to The Hague rather than detain him in Belgium.

Bemba was the first to be arrested over crimes in the Central African Republic. The court has not charged the millionaire with any crimes that his troops allegedly committed in the Congolese Ituri region. Human rights organisations have called it is a “missed opportunity” that Bembadoes not have to face charges for crimes his troops committed in Congo.

Bemba's MLC-militia has been accused of numerous atrocities in northern Congo during the country's five-year war. During a 2002 military operation called "effacer le tableau" ("wipe the slate") in Ituri, MLC forces allegedly committed numerous crimes against civilians, including rape, summary executions, and looting.

Bemba tried 27 MLC leaders in 2003 in an ad hoc military court over allegations of killings, rapes and even cannibalism upon Pygmies and others. No one was convicted in the trials which were widely dismissed a whitewash by Bemba to wipe out traces of his forces' human rights abuses.

Humanitarian crisis

The Central African Republic has suffered decades of armed revolts, coups and rebellions since it gained independence from France in 1960. The peak of violence from 2002-2003 was marked by a pattern of rape and other acts of sexual violence committed against hundreds of elderly women, young girls and men. The social impact is devastating, with many victims stigmatised and infected with HIV/AIDS.

But while much of the world's attention has been focused on the DRC these days, the humanitarian crisis has not come to an end. The CAR has seen more than 300,000 people forced from their homes over the past three years, due to civil war and attacks by armed bandits. Violence is endemic with various rebel groups and government soldiers killing and raping in the villages they attack.

Bemba's rise and fall

Jean-Pierre Bemba, an ethnic Ngwaka, spent his childhood between Brussels, Kinshasa and the small northern Congolese town of Gbadolite, known as "Versailles in the Jungle". This was the home and last safe haven of the late Congolese despot Mobutu Sese Seko.

Bemba, who became Mobutu's personal assistant in the early 1990s, soon managed to become one of the richest men in the DRC. But following the 1997 rebellion and takeover by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the multi-millionaire businessman fled to Uganda from where he took up arms with his rebel MLC group.

In only a few months, the MLC managed to capture northern DRC in the civil war that raged the country from 1998 to 2003. Gbadolite, at the border with the CAR, became Bemba's headquarter.

In 2002 President Ange-Felix Patassé of the Central African Republic asked Bemba to fight a rebellion by former army chief of staff François Bozizé. A reign of terror shook the country when Bemba's MLC-militia took part in a campaign of looting, attacking civilians and widespread rape. The troops left the CAR in March 2003 when Bozizé took power after a coup.

Bemba laid down his weapons in 2003 and was elected one of the four vice-presidents within the Congolese transitional government until he put himself forward for the presidential election in 2006. He lost the run-off against Joseph Kabila but was elected senator in January 2007. After his militia and the army clashed in Kinshasa Bemba fled to Portugal because of treason charges.