The International Criminal Court (ICC) has committed for trial the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Jean-Pierre Bemba, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, rape and pillaging.
The alleged offences were committed by Bemba when he commanded militia of his Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC) during fighting in the Central African Republic (CAR) between October 2002 and March 2003.
Bemba was arrested by Belgium in May last year and transferred to the International Criminal Court in July. The warrant on which he was arrested said that the MLC acted in concert with CAR forces to engage in rape, torture and looting.
The ICC declined to prosecute Bemba on the torture charges.
At the time of Bemba's arrest, the ICC said 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."
The ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber II has referred Bemba's case to a trial chamber. No date for the trial was announced.
