ICC sentences Congo’s Bemba to 18 years in prison

Former Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for rape and pillage committed by his troops, becoming the highest-level official to be handed down a sentence at the international criminal court.

Bemba, wearing a blue suit and tie, watched impassively from the dock during the hearing at The Hague on Tuesday.

The 53-year-old former militia commander is the third person convicted by the controversial “court of last resort” set up to try the world’s worst crimes in 2002.

Campaigners welcomed the lengthy prison term.

“Today’s sentencing marks a critical turning point for the thousands of women, children, and men who were victims of Bemba’s orchestrated campaign of rape and murder,” said Karen Naimer, director of the Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones Program at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

“The punishment meted out today can’t turn back the clock, but it can bring a measure of closure to those victims who’ve waited patiently more than a dozen years for this day to come.”

The conviction was the ICC’s first verdict to recognise rape as a weapon of war and to employ the doctrine of command responsibility: that leaders are accountable for the crimes of their subordinates, the group said.

The court told Bemba that the years he has already spent behind bars since his arrest in Belgium in 2008 and subsequent detention would be deducted from his sentence.

Earlier in the day Bemba’s lawyers gave notice they would appeal against his war crimes conviction and press for a mistrial.

Bemba was found guilty in March on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his private army – the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) – after he sent them into the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) from October 2002 to March 2003 to put down a coup.

“I believe this is a very important day for international criminal justice, especially when it comes to sexual and gender-based crimes,” chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told AFP news agency at the time.

The prosecution had called for a minimum 25-year jail term.

Bemba, who in 2002 became one of four vice presidents of Congo under a peace agreement brokered by South Africa which ended the bloody civil war, was sentenced to two 18-year terms and two 16-year terms, to run concurrently.

The judges said Bemba could at any point have ended the MLC’s five-month rampage, but chose not to.

The ICC was set up in 2002 to be an independent international “court of last resort” for grave crimes that could not be dealt with locally.