DAKAR, Senegal– The test of Congolese rebel leader Roger Lumbala started Wednesday in Paris over wrongs dedicated twenty years back throughout the 2nd Congo Battle.
Lumbala has actually been billed with “criminal conspiracy theory to prepare criminal activities versus mankind” and “engineering of criminal activities versus mankind” throughout the dispute from 1998 to 2003.
Lumbala encounters a feasible sentence of life behind bars. A decision is anticipated Dec. 19 complying with the test at the Paris criminal court.
The 67-year-old led the Congolese Rally for National Freedom, a rebel team backed by bordering Uganda and implicated of wrongs versus private citizens, especially targeting the Nande and Bambuti ethnic minorities in eastern Congo in 2002 and 2003.
The team fully commited extensive abuse, implementations, rape, compelled labor and sex-related enslavement, according to United Nations records.
After the battle, Lumbala worked as preacher of international sell Congo’s transitional federal government from 2003 to 2005 and later on as a participant of parliament. The Congolese federal government provided an apprehension warrant in 2011 over his claimed assistance of the M23 rebel team, motivating him to run away to France.
Lumbala was detained in Paris in 2020 and prosecuted by a French court in 2023.
The test is feasible under a French legislation identifying global territory for criminal activities versus mankind. His situation notes the very first time a Congolese political or army leader has actually been pursued mass wrongs prior to a nationwide court under the global territory concept.
Numerous teams standing for civil events consisting of the Clooney Structure for Justice, Test International, Minority Civil Liberty Team, Justice And also and PAP-RDC provided a joint declaration last month commending what they called a “historical test.”
” For also long, wrongdoers have actually run away justice, some also increasing to placements of power,” stated Daniele Perissi, head of Congo’s program at test International. “This test is a historical action in damaging that cycle of immunity.”
Congo has actually been wrecked by lethal dispute in its mineral-rich eastern because the 1990s with greater than 100 energetic armed teams. The dispute rose previously this year when the M23 rebel group seized two key cities with the assistance of bordering Rwandan pressures.
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Sylvie Corbet in Paris added to this record.
