DR Congo's Jean-Pierre Bemba sentenced to 18 years in jail for rapes, murders

The Hague: The International Criminal Court Tuesday handed down its toughest sentence yet, ordering former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba to serve 18 years in jail for “sadistic, cruel” rapes and murders by his troops in Central African Republic. “The chamber sentences Mr Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo to a total of 18 years of imprisonment,” said judge Sylvia Steiner as the once feared rebel leader, who has denied all culpability, sat intently listening in the courtroom, showing no emotion. In justifying the ruling, Steiner said the former militia leader had failed to exercise control over his private army sent into CAR in late October 2002 where they carried out a series of rapes, murders and pillaging of “particular cruelty.” [caption id=“attachment_2848068” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Jean-Pierre Bemba enters the court room of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. AP[/caption] Bemba, dressed in a dark suit and blue tie, is the highest-level official to be sentenced by the ICC after being convicted in March on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. And he is the only the third person to be sentenced at the tribunal based in The Hague since it began work in 2002. The atrocities were carried out by Bemba’s private army, the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), when he sent them into neighbouring CAR in late October 2002 to put down a coup against then president Ange-Felix Patasse. The 1,500 troops unleashed a five-month campaign of terror, during which the judges said “entire families were victimised.” Some victims were raped repeatedly by as many as 20 soldiers, others were shot point blank for refusing to hand over a motorbike or a sheep. ‘No mitigating circumstances’ Prosecutors had called for a sentence of at least 25 years imprisonment. The case however is likely to drag on for a few more years, as his defence team has already filed notice that it intends to appeal, and argued that Bemba should be released immediately as he has been behind bars since his arrest in 2008. Bemba was “extremely disappointed” with Tuesday’s sentence, his lawyer Kate Gibson told AFP. The jail term was “dramatically outside the sentences that have been given to commanders before the other courts and tribunals,” she said. “Today’s sentence is by no means the end of the road for Mr Bemba,” she added. “It merely signals that we are now moving to the next phase of the process which is the appeal.” The three-judge bench however insisted it had “not found any mitigating circumstances” to reduce its sentence. Reading out their findings at the world’s only permanent war crimes court, based in The Hague, Judge Steiner said Bemba had done “more than tolerate the crimes as a commander”. “Mr Bemba’s failure to take action was deliberately aimed at encouraging the attacks directed against the civilian population,” she said, adding he had all the necessary means to deter his troops from committing the crimes. ‘Justice for victims’ Bemba, a rich businessman who became one of the vice presidents of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was arrested in Brussels in 2008 after losing a bid for his country’s presidency. His case was the first at the ICC to focus on rape as a weapon of war and the first to highlight a military commander’s responsibility for the conduct of the troops under his control. In a swift reaction, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Twitter that it welcomed the sentence saying it “offers a measure of justice for victims of sexual violence.” It also served as a warning to “other commanders that they too can be held accountable for rapes and other serious abuses committed by troops under their control.” But his defence has argued that “the whole trial process was flawed and unfair and that Mr Bemba’s rights as an accused were violated throughout,” his lawyer Peter Haynes said. “No reasonable trial chamber could have convicted him of the charges he faced,” Haynes argued in a filing late Monday. In different cases, the ICC has previously sentenced two other Congolese warlords to 14 and 12 years respectively.