page_title: Caprivi treason trial
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Caprivi treason trial / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: map of the Caprivi region in Namibia Deutsch: Karte der Region Caprivi in Namibia
context_page_description: The Caprivi treason trial is a trial in which the Government of Namibia indicted 132 people for allegedly participating in the Caprivi conflict on the side of the Caprivi Liberation Army during a period between 1992 and 2002. They were charged with high treason, murder, sedition, and many other offences, altogether 278 counts of criminal conduct.
  The trial is the longest and largest in the history of Namibia. While it started in 2003, the court case lasted more than 16 years, with High Court judgement being delivered in December 2015, and a Supreme Court challenge being launched in 2016 and still verdict pending.
  According to The Namibian newspaper, the High Court judgement sentenced "30 men convicted of high treason, nine counts of murder and 90 charges of attempted murder". Among those initially tried, the High Court ruling acquitted 79 of the accused. Meanwhile, 22 others died in custody during the 16-year period between arrests and High Court judgement. Some of the alleged leaders of the sedition attempt were in exile at the time the Caprivi conflict peaked and have not been brought to court.
context_section_description: The Caprivi Strip is a remnant of the Berlin Conference of 1884, at which the European powers divided sub-Saharan Africa amongst themselves, indifferent to its ethnology and often with inadequate knowledge of its geography. After the conference, European governments learned more about the geography of the interior and negotiated changes to boundaries agreed upon in Berlin.  In 1890, German diplomat Leo von Caprivi sought to gain access to the Zambezi River for the German colony of South West Africa, to give Germany an interior route to Africa's East Coast, where the German colony Tanganyika was located.  In the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty, Germany gave up its interest in Zanzibar in return for the island of Heligoland in the North Sea and the Caprivi Strip. The Zambezi proved to be unnavigable, but the Strip remained, even as South West Africa became Namibia.
  On 2 August 1999, members of the Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA) launched an armed attack on government forces and buildings in the regional capital of Katima Mulilo in the Zambezi Region of north eastern Namibia. The same evening, president Sam Nujoma declared a state of emergency in the Caprivi province. Members of the Namibia Defence Force (NDF, Namibia's national army) and the Special Field Force (SFF, the paramilitary police unit) were deployed and repelled the attack.
  11 people were killed during the attacks, among them 6 members of the security forces. 300 suspected rebel fighters and civilian sympathisers were detained, 132 of which were later charged.
caption: Location of the Zambezi Region on the Namibia map
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