When Jean-Pierre Bemba, a rich and powerful Congolese politician, visited his family in Brussels in late May, he had no inkling that he would be grabbed by the Belgian police, thrown in jail and put before an international tribunal.
His arrest warrant had been kept secret by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
On Friday, Bemba, a former vice president and still a sitting senator in Congo, made his first appearance in court. Bemba, once a rebel leader, has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity during a 2002 to 2003 campaign by his forces fighting to Congo’s north in the Central African Republic.
PHOTO: AFP
Bemba, who lost Congo’s pivotal presidential election in 2006, is the most senior suspect now in the custody of the court, which holds three other Congolese suspects accused of large-scale human rights violations.
The prosecution is expected to focus on sexual violence, charging that Bemba’s fighters gang-raped women of all ages in public places, infecting many of them with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Prosecutors contend that the fighters also tortured and pillaged, leaving victims dead, wounded or traumatized. Human rights groups have long said that Bemba’s militiamen were aiding the Central African Republic’s president at the time, Ange-Felix Patasse, whose forces terrorized civilians in retribution for a coup attempt.
During the short hearing on Friday, Bemba was not asked to enter a plea, but he has denied the charges. He waved to his wife in the court’s public gallery and was asked by the court only to confirm his identity and the conditions of his detention.
“The conditions are not the best, not what I had hoped for,” said Bemba, who gave his occupation as “senator.”
Bemba, 45, is a scion of a prominent Congolese family with a large business empire. He is still an important opposition figure with a considerable following, even though before being arrested he had spent the past year in Portugal. He had fled Congo amid clashes between his forces and the government.
At home, his angry supporters have denounced the court in The Hague. In Brussels, Congolese immigrants have protested his arrest on the streets, wearing T-shirts adorned with Bemba’s photograph.
This week the office of the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, had a serious setback in another case linked to Congo.
On Wednesday, judges ordered the release of another Congolese warlord, Thomas Lubanga, just as his trial was about to begin. It was to have been the first trial since the permanent criminal court was created in 2002.
Judges ruled that mishandling of the evidence by the prosecutor’s office meant that Lubanga could not receive a fair trial. The prosecution has appealed the decision, and Lubanga will have to stay in the court’s prison in The Hague while the appeal is considered.
The Lubanga episode has prompted surprise and discomfort in the large legal community of this city. It also cast a shadow over this week’s marking of the 10th anniversary of the Rome Statute, which created the court.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of