3 July 2008
The former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Jean-Pierre Bemba, has been transferred to The Hague in the Netherlands for trial on war crimes charges - including accusations of sexual crimes committed in the Central African Republic (CAR).
The International Criminal Court (ICC), which will conduct the trial, announced his transfer from Belgium - where he was arrested in May - in a statement on Thursday.
Its announcement followed a day after a setback for the prosecution in another landmark case before the court, in which DRC militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was ordered released.
The ICC said Bemba, head of the Mouvement de libération du Congo (MLC) was alleged to be responsible for five counts of war crimes and three counts of crimes against humanity committed in the CAR between October 2002 and March 2003.
The warrant on which he was arrested said that Bemba's militia, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), acted in concert with CAR forces to engage in rape, torture, degrading treatment of a person and looting.
The ICC said at the time of his arrest that a particular feature of his case was "the number of rapes carried out with shocking brutality." The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, alleged: "He had done it before in CAR, he had done it before in the DRC. He had to be stopped."
Massive Sexual Crimes Will Not Go Unpunished - ICC
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The ICCis selectively committing to trial ONLY SOME OF THE REAL PEOPLE THAT HAVE COMMITTED WAR CRIMES. UGANDA'S MUSEVENENI AND RWANDA'S KAGAME INVADED DRC 1998 AND KILLED OVER 4 MILLION CONGOLESE BUT ICC DID NOTHING.
The Leader JEAN-PIERRE BEMBA should be released by the ICC the earliest possible because we Congolese still need and beleive him as the current potential and most powful Leader of DRC and his leadership does not have any rival.Beside this,NKUNDA ,KAGAME ,MUSEVENI, NTAGANDA BOSCO etc. should also be arrested because there are lots of proofs to show that they are all involved in war conflicts in DRC and particularly in Great Lakes Region.Brief,the above persons are the most wanted by the ICC because they have committed lots of crimes against Humanity,war crimes and a real genocid worse than the Rwandan which is still being sung everywhere in the world as a slogan.One thing should be known by everybody around the world and especially by the International Community:Congolese People are also Human-beings and deserve the same legal treatment as well as other races.
Active Discussions: International Court Charges DRC's Bemba