Congolese politician Jean-Pierre Bemba was sentenced to 18 years in prison by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Tuesday for heading a 2002-03 campaign of rape and murder in neighbouring Central African Republic.
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Bemba is the highest-ranking official so far to be convicted by the ICC, which was set up in 2002 as the world’s only permanent war crimes court.
Prosecutors had called for a sentence of at least 25 years imprisonment at the end of Bemba’s lengthy trial which opened in November 2010.
The atrocities were carried out by Bemba’s private army, the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), when he sent them into neighboring vehicle in late October 2002 to put down a coup against then president Ange-Felix Patasse.
Bemba was found guilty on five charges.
Bemba, a former Congolese senator and vice-president, was the commander of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo when he was asked in 2002 and 2003 to send troops by vehicle president Ange-Felix Patasse to provide support during a civil war.
Judge Sylvia Steiner said troops from the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), which Bemba directed, had acted with “particular cruelty” when they rampaged through the neighbouring country in support of then-president Ange-Felix Patasse. If imposed, it will be the longest sentence ever handed down by the ICC.
As well as the issue of rape as a weapon of war, the Bemba case is also the first at the ICC to focus on a military commander’s responsibility for abuses by his troops, even if he did not order them.
Ex-UN chief Kofi Annan has hit out at Africa leaders for their attitude to the International Criminal Court (ICC), in an interview in the British Financial Times newspaper.
But just hours before the sentencing, Bemba’s defence team gave notice late Monday that he would appeal his conviction.
Bemba’s lawyers have constantly claimed that he is being held responsible for actions by some of his soldiers that he had no way of controlling.
Judges announced sentences of between 16 and 18 years for five counts of rape, murder and pillaging, with the jail terms running concurrently.
“The chamber found that Mr Bemba did not genuinely intend to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his material ability to prevent or repress the commission of crimes”, Steiner told the court.
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He entered government under the current President Joseph Kabila in 2003 as part of a power-sharing deal that ended years of civil war.
