A former Congolese rebel leader and vice president was convicted Monday of murder, rape and other charges in a landmark International Criminal Court case that identified sexual violence by troops as a war crime.
Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said the trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba highlighted the critical need to eradicate sex crimes as weapons of war.
“We will spare no efforts to continue to bring accountability for such heinous crimes in future cases,” Bensouda said after the conviction was announced in The Hague, Netherlands. "Where some may want to draw a veil over these crimes, I as a prosecutor must and will continue to draw a line under them."
Bemba, 53, was accused of allowing his 1,000-man rebel army, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, to run roughshod over civilians in neighboring Central African Republic in 2002-2003. Then-Central African president Ange-Félix Patassé had sought Bemba's help in a failed effort to halt a coup.
Testimony revealed numerous instances of women and girls being gang raped at gunpoint, sometimes as their families were forced to watch.
"The MLC soldiers directed a widespread attack against the civilian population in the Central African Republic," the court found. "MLC soldiers committed many acts of pillaging, rape, and murder against civilians over a large geographical area."
André Olivier Manguereka, president of the Central African League for Human Rights, called the ruling a "landmark along the road to justice for victims of crimes of sexual violence as it is the first conviction of this kind in the ICC."
Bemba, who will remain in custody pending sentencing, argued that the soldiers were under Patassé's command when the atrocities took place. Bemba was not in the country during most of the attacks, but Bensouda produced evidence that Bemba remained the commander.
Bemba was arrested in Brussels in 2008. His trial began in 2010, and Monday he was convicted on all charges, including two counts of crimes against humanity (murder and rape) and three counts of war crimes (murder, rape and pillaging).
The case also marked the first time a commanding officer was held criminally responsible for crimes committed by his troops.
"Mr. Bemba was a person effectively acting as a military commander with effective authority and control over the forces that committed the crimes," the court found.
Bemba has 30 days to appeal the ruling. He faces up to 30 years in prison — and possibly more if the court determines aggravating factors.
Bemba's Movement for the Liberation of Congo morphed into a political party when he joined the Democratic Republic of the Congo's interim government more than a decade ago. Bemba ran for president in 2006 but went into exile after losing in a runoff.
The nation's population of almost 70 million is among the poorest on Earth, despite rich deposits of natural resources that include about 30% of the world's diamonds. Bemba, however, is one of the Congo's richest men.
