It is a verdict of the Special Criminal Court (SCC), a hybrid court of local and international magistrates. On Monday, three members of a Central African armed group were sentenced to prison terms ranging from twenty years to life for “crimes against humanity”.
Issa Sallet Adoum, Ousman Yaouba and Tahir Mahamat, members of the 3R group (Return, Reclamation and Rehabilitation) accused of the massacre, on May 21, 2019, of 46 civilians in villages in the north-west, were notably found guilty of “murders” , “inhuman acts” and “humiliating and degrading treatment”. The first was sentenced to life imprisonment and the other two to twenty years’ imprisonment.
One of the defendants on hunger strike
The SCC was created in 2015 by the government under the sponsorship of the UN to try war crimes and crimes against humanity committed since 2003 and this first verdict was particularly awaited. She had opened her trial on April 25 and the prosecution had requested life imprisonment for the three defendants in mid-August. Issa Sallet Adoum, was also convicted in his “capacity of military leader” for “rapes committed by his constituent subordinates”, “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes”, specifies the statement of the CPS.
Mahamat Tahir, one of the three defendants who claims his innocence, appeared weakened at the hearing on a stretcher after having started a hunger strike for twenty-one days, noted AFP journalists. The defendants have three days to lodge an appeal, specifies the Court which acquitted them of the counts of “torture as a war crime”.
Violence between militias
The Central African Republic, the second least developed country in the world according to the UN, has been the scene of a civil war since 2013, very deadly in its first years but which has decreased in intensity since 2018. In the first years it opposed predominantly Muslim militias united within the Seleka alliance, to others – the anti-balakas – dominated by Christians and animists, the UN accusing both sides of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The civil war continues today between armed rebel groups, from the Séléka and anti-balaka sometimes united, and the army of President Faustin Archange Touadéra supported by hundreds of Russian paramilitaries.