THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — International Criminal Court appeals judges have overturned the convictions of former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba for atrocities committed by his forces in Central African Republic.

Bemba was found guilty in 2016 as a military commander of two counts of crimes against humanity and three war crimes for a campaign of murder, rape and pillaging by his troops in 2002 and 2003. He denied responsibility for the crimes.

In a 3-2 majority ruling on Friday, the court’s appeals chamber reversed some of his convictions and acquitted him on other charges, saying the trial chamber in his case made a series of errors in its analysis of his role as a commanding officer and in other aspects of the case.

Bemba was sentenced in 2016 to 18 years in prison. </s> Narcisse Arido of of the Central African Republic, left, sits in the court room to hear the verdict of the International Criminal court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday March 22, 2017. Former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba has been sentenced to an extra year in prison and fined 300,000 euros along with four others for interfering with witnesses in his trial.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Powhatan Today. </s> Judges at the International Criminal Court Wednesday sentenced former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba to an additional year in prison for bribing witnesses during his earlier trial on war crimes.

In the latest case, Bemba and four members of his legal team were found guilty of bribing and otherwise influencing 14 defense witnesses to try to tilt the outcome of that first trial, which led to a conviction in March 2016 for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The new case began last October and was the ICC's first one dealing with witness tampering. Bemba's lawyer, Aime Kilolo, was given a two-and-a-half-year suspended sentence as well as a $32,000 fine for his involvement.

Bemba is currently serving an 18-year term in connection with widespread abuses by his forces in the neighboring Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003. Last year, judges ruled he was criminally responsible for acts of murder, rape and pillage carried out by his militia in the CAR. He was not only the first person convicted by a global war crimes court for crimes of sexual violence, but also the first to be held directly responsible for crimes committed by his soldiers. </s> The former Congolese vice-president, Jean-Pierre Bemba, has had his convictions for war crimes and crimes against humanity overturned.

The appeals chamber of the international criminal court in the Hague decided by a majority on Friday to acquit the former politician following an earlier hearing.

The 55-year-old warlord commanded a militia that committed mass murder, rape and pillage in neighbouring Central African Republic, the court ruled at the end of his original trial in 2016.

The verdicts were considered a legal landmark, since it was the first time the ICC had convicted a defendant of rape or “command responsibility for the actions of troops”. According to a legal principle established by other UN tribunals, a commander can be found responsible for failing to take action to stop crimes he knows are being committed by subordinates.

There were cheers from Bemba’s supporters in the gallery when the appeal decision was announced by the five-judge panel, headed by judge Christine Van den Wyngaert.

Bemba had been found guilty of two counts of crimes against humanity (murder and rape) and three counts of war crimes (murder, rape, and pillaging) committed in CAR between October 2002 and March 2003. His troops had entered the country to prop up the president, Ange-Félix Patassé, who was eventually ousted.

He was subsequently sentenced to 18 years in prison. His appeal was against both the sentence and the verdicts. 



Bemba, who fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo after losing a presidential poll, was arrested in Belgium in 2008 and transferred to the ICC’s detention centre in The Hague. His trial started in November 2010 and lasted four years. It heard from 77 witnesses.

His defence lawyers insisted he had no control over his 1,500 troops. “There is not a single documentary piece of evidence that shows any orders passing from Bemba and going to his troops in Central African Republic,” his lawyer Kate Gibson said in her closing argument at the original trial.

Bemba will remain in custody on account of another case in which he was convicted of offences against the administration of justice, the ICC said in a statement. </s> THE HAGUE, March 22 (Reuters) - Judges at the International Criminal Court on Wednesday added a year to Jean-Pierre Bemba's 18-year jail term following the former Congolese vice president's conviction for attempting to bribe witnesses during his war crimes trial.

After a second trial on the separate charges, Bemba, who was vice president of Democratic Republic of Congo from 2003 to 2006, was ordered to pay a 300,000 euro fine to the court's fund supporting victims of atrocities.

His lawyer Aime Kilolo was given a 30,000 euro fine and a two-and-a-half year suspended prison sentence.

Bemba is appealing his conviction last year on charges of having committed war crimes by allowing his forces on a murderous rampage through the neighbouring Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003. </s> FILE - In this June 21, 2016 file photo, former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba enters the courtroom of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. International Criminal Court appeals judges overturned Friday, June 8, 2018 the convictions of former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba for atrocities committed by his forces in Central African Republic. The reversal delivered a serious blow to ICC prosecutors by scrapping all the convictions in the court’s first trial to focus largely on sexual violence and on command responsibility - the legal principle that a commanding officer can be held responsible for crimes committed by his or her troops or for failing to prevent or punish the crimes. (Michael Kooren, Pool via AP, File)

FILE - In this June 21, 2016 file photo, former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba enters the courtroom of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. International Criminal Court appeals judges overturned Friday, June 8, 2018 the convictions of former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba for atrocities committed by his forces in Central African Republic. The reversal delivered a serious blow to ICC prosecutors by scrapping all the convictions in the court’s first trial to focus largely on sexual violence and on command responsibility - the legal principle that a commanding officer can be held responsible for crimes committed by his or her troops or for failing to prevent or punish the crimes. (Michael Kooren, Pool via AP, File)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — In a blow to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court and to victims of rape and murder in a conflict-ravaged African nation, appeals judges on Friday overturned the convictions of former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba for atrocities committed by his forces in Central African Republic.

The reversal delivered a serious setback to ICC prosecutors by scrapping all the convictions in the court’s first trial to focus largely on sexual violence and on command responsibility — the legal principle that a commanding officer can be held responsible for crimes committed by his or her troops or for failing to prevent or punish the crimes.

“We find it regrettable and troubling,” Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said. “And I can only regret that this ‘significant and unexplained departure’ from the court’s previous jurisprudence, as the dissenting judges described it, has taken place in the most serious case of sexual and gender-based violence that has been decided upon by this court to date.”

The ruling could have implications for possible future convictions of commanding officers in other conflicts.

Bemba’s lawyer, Peter Haynes, welcomed the decision.

“It’s not some acquittal on a technicality,” he said. “They went to the very heart of a commander’s culpability, namely his responsibility to ensure that when put in the knowledge of crimes he takes steps to investigate them and punish them.”

Bemba was the most senior suspect convicted by the global court and his 18-year sentence was the highest handed down in the court’s history.

Bemba, wearing a suit and tie, showed little emotion as Presiding Judge Christine Van den Wyngaert reversed his convictions. Bemba’s supporters in the packed public gallery were not so reserved; they cheered, whistled and hugged one another for so long that Van den Wyngaert threatened to halt proceedings if order was not restored.

The appeals chamber, in a 3-2 majority ruling, said the trial chamber “erred in its evaluation of Mr. Bemba’s motivation and the measures that he could have taken in light of the limitations he faced in investigating and prosecuting crimes as a remote commander sending troops to a foreign country.”

The appeals chamber also said Bemba was wrongly convicted for crimes that were not even included in the charges against him.

The two judges who disagreed wrote a dissenting opinion in which they said the acquittals were based on “an incorrect standard of appellate review,” the court said.

Bemba was found guilty in 2016 as a military commander of two counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of war crimes for a campaign of murder, rape and pillaging by his troops, known as the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, in 2002 and 2003.

He denied responsibility for the crimes. He was sentenced in 2016 to 18 years in prison.

Bemba has been in custody at the ICC for nearly a decade after authorities in Belgium arrested him there in 2008 and sent him to The Hague.

Van den Wyngaert said Bemba would not immediately be released because a separate panel of ICC judges is still considering what sentence he should be given in a conviction for interfering with witnesses in his trial. She urged that trial panel to quickly decide whether he should be set free.

The court scheduled a hearing for Tuesday to discuss the issue.

Haynes, the lawyer, was angry that Bemba was not released immediately.

“I think that is unacceptable. It is immoral and it may even be illegal,” he told reporters.

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 President Ange-Felix Patasse in neighboring Central African Republic, or CAR.

At the time of his original conviction, judges said that women, girls and men were targeted by Bemba’s forces, often with multiple soldiers raping women and girls in front of family members. In one incident, a man’s wife was gang-raped and when he protested he, too, was raped at gunpoint.

Friday’s ruling does not mean those crimes did not take place, but that Bemba cannot be held criminally responsible for them.

Solomon Sacco, head of Amnesty International’s international justice team, said “the decision will be felt as a huge blow for the many victims of the ‘war against women’ waged in the Central African Republic through a horrifying campaign of rape and sexual violence.”

“5,229 survivors of Bemba’s atrocities participated in the ICC proceedings — for these brave individuals, as well as thousands of other victims in CAR, the pursuit of truth, justice and reparations will continue,” he said.

Sacco said the ICC prosecutor’s office and judicial authorities in CAR “must learn from this decision and redouble their efforts to investigate and prosecute alleged perpetrators of crimes under international law.”

Karine Bonneau of the International Federation for Human Rights slammed Friday’s decision.

“Twenty years after its creation, has the ICC just scuttled itself?” she said in a statement. “Delivering this judgment, it seems to say to the warlords: ‘As long as you are not on the scene, let your troops commit the worst crimes and the worst abominations, say that you have nothing to do with that and we will not condemn you.’”

It remains to be seen what Bemba will do once he is released. Haynes said he likely would join his family in Belgium.

Prominent Congolese opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi, speaking at an Atlantic Council event last month in Washington, said Bemba’s Movement for the Liberation of Congo was part of a new political alliance against President Joseph Kabila.

Frustration is rising in Congo against Kabila as the presidential election has been delayed since late 2016. </s> The International Criminal Court (ICC) has overturned the conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity of former Democratic Republic of Congo Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba.

Bemba was found guilty in 2016 of crimes committed in the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) from 2002 to 2003.

He was accused of failing to prevent his rebels killing and raping.

But a judge has now said he cannot be held responsible for their actions.

Christine Van den Wijngaert also said the judges in the 2016 case had failed to take into account his attempts to stop the crimes once he was made aware they were taking place.
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The decision to overturn the 18-year sentence was greeted with cheers from his supporters in the gallery.

But human rights group Amnesty International said it was a “huge blow” for the victims of a “horrifying campaign of rape and sexual violence”, as it called on the authorities to redouble their efforts to prosecute those who had carried it out.

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda described the ruling as “regrettable and troubling”.

Before Friday’s decision, the ICC had issued verdicts in six cases, with nine people being convicted and one acquitted, according to its website. ​

More than 5,000 survivors took part in the proceedings against Bemba, said Amnesty’s head of international justice, Solomon Sacco.

“For these brave individuals, as well as thousands of other victims in CAR, the pursuit of truth, justice and reparations will continue,” he added.

Bemba’s conviction marked several milestones for the ICC. It was the first time the court had focused on rape as a weapon of war, and the first time a suspect had been convicted for crimes committed by others under his command.

The court heard how Bemba sent more than 1,000 fighters to CAR back in 2002 to help then President Ange Felix Patasse put down an attempted coup.

But his forces committed acts of extreme violence against civilians – crimes which the original judges said Bemba was made aware of but did nothing to stop.

However, appeal Judge Van den Wyngaert said the judges in the original case had “ignored significant testimonial evidence that Bemba’s ability to investigate and punish crimes in CAR was limited”.

Appeal judges also said he had been “erroneously” convicted for specific criminal acts.

Bemba, who has already spent almost a decade in jail, will not be immediately released from detention in The Hague after he lost a separate appeal against a conviction for bribing witnesses.

CAR, meanwhile, has remained in an almost constant state of turmoil. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned in January that half its population was in need of humanitarian aid, while the United Nations has had a peacekeeping force in the country since 2013.

A report by Human Rights Watch in October 2017 said fighters in its most recent conflict, which has been raging for more than five years, continued to use sexual violence to “terrorise women and children”.
• A well-connected businessman and the son of prominent Congolese businessman Bemba Saolona
• 1998: Helped by Uganda to form MLC rebel group in Democratic Republic of Congo
• 2006: Loses run-off election to President Joseph Kabila but gets most votes in western DR Congo, including Kinshasa
• 2007: Flees to Belgium after clashes in Kinshasa
• 2008: Arrested in Brussels and handed over to ICC
• 2016: Found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity </s> Today, 8 June 2018, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court ("ICC" or "Court") decided, by majority, to acquit Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo from the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Judge Christine Van den Wyngaert, Presiding Judge in this appeal, read a summary of the Judgment during a public hearing. Mr Bemba will remain in detention on account of another case in which he has been convicted of offences against the administration of justice, pending a decision of Trial Chamber VII in that case.

Judge Sanji Mmasenono Monageng and Judge Piotr Hofmański appended a joint dissenting opinion in which they explained why they disagreed with the majority's decision to acquit Mr Bemba. Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji as well as Judge Van den Wyngaert and Judge Howard Morrison appended separate opinions.

The Appeals Chamber's Judgment reversed Trial Chamber III's decision of 21 March 2016, which had concluded that, as a person effectively acting as a military commander and with effective control over the Mouvement de libération du Congo ("MLC") troops, Mr Bemba was criminally responsible pursuant to article 28(a) of the ICC Rome Statute for the crimes against humanity of murder and rape and the war crimes of murder, rape and pillaging committed by the MLC troops in the Central African Republic ("CAR") from on or about 26 October 2002 to 15 March 2003.

Having considered all written submissions of the parties and participants and the oral observations made during the appeal hearings held in January 2018, the Appeals Chamber found, by majority, that Trial Chamber III had erred on two important issues:
• None It had erroneously convicted Mr Bemba for specific criminal acts that were outside the scope of the charges as confirmed; and
• None In its assessment of whether Mr Bemba took all necessary and reasonable measures to prevent, repress or punish the commission by his subordinates of the other crimes within the scope of the case, the Trial Chamber made serious errors. More specifically, the Trial Chamber erred in its evaluation of Mr Bemba's motivation and the measures that he could have taken in light of the limitations he faced in investigating and prosecuting crimes as a remote commander sending troops to a foreign country; in whether he made efforts to refer the allegations of crimes to the CAR's authorities; and in whether he intentionally limited the mandate of commissions and inquiries that he established. Furthermore, in the view of the Appeals Chamber majority, there was an apparent discrepancy between the limited number of crimes within the case's scope for which Mr Bemba was held responsible and the Trial Chamber's assessment of which measures Mr Bemba should have taken.

On that basis, the Appeals Chamber concluded, by majority, that Mr Bemba's conviction must be reversed, that Mr Bemba cannot be held criminally liable under article 28 of the ICC Rome Statute for the crimes within the scope of the case that were committed by MLC troops during the CAR operation and that he must be acquitted thereof.

Judge Monageng and Judge Hofmański found that all criminal acts for which Mr Bemba was convicted fell within the scope of the case that the Prosecutor had brought against him. They also disagreed with the majority that the Trial Chamber erred when it found that Mr Bemba had failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures to prevent or repress MLC crimes; in their view, the majority reached this conclusion based on an incorrect standard of appellate review. The judges in the minority would have confirmed Mr Bemba's conviction.

Following this Judgment, and while there is no reason to continue Mr Bemba's detention on the basis of the present case, it is for Trial Chamber VII to decide, shortly, whether Mr Bemba's continued detention is warranted in relation to his conviction for offences against the administration of justice.

The Appeals Chamber also dismissed as moot the appeals that Mr Bemba and the Prosecutor had brought against the sentence Trial Chamber III had imposed.

Judgment on the appeal of Mr Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo against Trial Chamber III's "Judgment pursuant to Article 74 of the Statute"

For further information on the case, click here.

For further information, please contact Fadi El Abdallah, Spokesperson and Head of Public Affairs Unit, International Criminal Court, by telephone at: +31 (0)70 515-9152 or +31 (0)6 46448938 or by e-mail at: fadi.el-abdallah@icc-cpi.int

You can also follow the Court's activities on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube and Flickr </s> The International Criminal Court (ICC) has overturned the war crimes conviction of Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former vice president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on appeal.

Presiding judge Christine Van den Wijngaert said on Friday that Bemba could not be held responsible for atrocities carried out by troops under his control in the neighbouring Central African Republic, and that trial judges had failed to consider the efforts he made to stop crimes once he became aware of them.

Bemba was sentenced to 18 years in prison in June 2016 for alleged crimes, including murder and rape, in what was described as a landmark ruling after a five-year trial.

Judges in the earlier trial said Bemba had failed to stop a series of "sadistic and cruel" rapes and murders by his militia, known as the MLC.

He later got an extra year and a fine for attempting to interfere with witnesses in his trial.

"Mr Bemba cannot be held criminally responsible for the crimes committed by MLC troops during the Central African Republic operation," Van den Wijngaert said, reading the ruling of a 5-judge appeal panel.

Van den Wijngaert said Bemba's efforts to stop the crimes "extinguished his responsibility in full".

Lambert Mende, a spokesperson for the Congolese government, said Bemba has the right to return home once he is released.

"There's not even any question over it," Mende told Reuters news agency.

"Do you know of any other country where a Congolese citizen is supposed to live? All Congolese are free to live in DRC"

Bemba's acquittal is a huge blow for prosecutors, as his conviction was one of the few they had won since the court's establishment in 2002.

Bemba was the highest-ranking politician convicted by the permanent war crimes court, and his case had been seen as establishing a precedent that political and military officials may be held liable for the actions of troops under their command.

Leaders across Africa have long accused the ICC of unfairly targeting the continent.

In 2016, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni described the international tribunal as "useless" as he applauded South Africa and Burundi's efforts to withdraw from the court.

Earlier in April, Rwandan President Paul Kagame reprimanded the ICC for its bias against Africa, saying it has failed to mete out justice in any other part of the world.

"From the time of its inception, I said there was a fraud basis on which it was set up and how it was going to be used. I told people that this would be a court to try Africans, not people from across the world," Kagame said.

The permanent court in The Hague, the Netherlands, was established by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court treaty in 1998 in order to prosecute and punish individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.
Jean-Pierre Bemba is acquitted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court appeals chamber.