ICC finds ex-Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba guilty of war crimes

The former Congolese vice-president, Jean-Pierre Bemba, has been found guilty of war crimes in a trial at the international criminal court in The Hague.

The 53-year-old warlord commanded a militia that committed mass murder, rape and pillage in neighbouring Central African Republic, the court ruled at the end of a trial that focused on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

More than 5,000 victims were granted the right to participate in the hearings – the highest number in any of the cases before the ICC.

Prosecutors told the court that Bemba, who led that Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), “knew that the troops were committing crimes and did not take all necessary and reasonable measures within his power to prevent or repress their commission”.

Bemba was charged with two counts of crimes against humanity, involving murder and rape, as well as three counts of war crimes – murder, rape and pillaging – all connected to attacks in CAR between 2002 and 2003. His troops had entered CAR to prop up the country’s president, Ange-Félix Patassé, who was eventually ousted.

The presiding Brazilian judge, Sylvia Steiner, said that MLC soldiers had opened fire on civilians without regard to age or gender. “The civilian population was the primary rather than the incidental target of the attack,” she said in her judgment.

Bemba was arrested in Belgium in 2008 and shortly afterwards transferred to the ICC’s detention centre in The Hague. His trial started in November 2010 and lasted four years. It heard from 77 witnesses.

Bemba and four others are also on trial in a second case in which they are accused of bribing witnesses in his main trial. He will be sentenced after a separate hearing.

(Reuters)