In the Central African Republic, 23 people, including the country’s former president, François Bozizé, and several prominent rebel leaders, have been sentenced to forced labor for life for their involvement in an armed offensive during the presidential election of December 2020.
Former Central African President François Bozizé, now the exiled leader of the main rebel coalition, was sentenced to forced labor for life in Bangui on Thursday, including charges of “conspiracy” and “rebellion,” according to a judgment transmitted to AFP by the Ministry of Justice on Friday. Bozizé, who seized power in 2003 through a coup before being overthrown by rebels ten years later, was sentenced in absentia, along with two of his sons and twenty other co-defendants, including important rebel leaders.
They were all also sentenced for “undermining state security” and “murder,” according to the judgment read by Joachim Pessire, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Bangui, which hears first-instance criminal cases. The judgment does not specify the crimes or the period in question. Bozizé, 76, who had sought refuge in Chad until March 2023 when he went into exile in Guinea-Bissau, is the coordinator of the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), the main Central African rebel coalition formed in December 2020, which continues to engage in guerrilla warfare in the north of the country.
Ali Darassa, the fugitive military leader of the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (UPC), the main component of the CPC, is among those sentenced. Civil war has ravaged the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries, since 2013 when a coalition of armed groups dominated by Muslims, the Seleka, overthrew Bozizé, who then organized and armed so-called anti-balaka militias, mostly Christian and animist, in an attempt to regain power. The conflict, extremely deadly in its early years, has significantly decreased in intensity since 2018.
