The Hague — International judges found former Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba and four aides guilty on Wednesday of corrupting witnesses, bribing them with money and laptops to lie in testifying at his war crimes trial.
The case was "about clear, and downright criminal behaviour of the five accused ... that resulted in serious offences against the administration of justice," Judge Bertram Schmitt said in handing down the verdict at the International Criminal Court.
"No legal system in the world can accept the bribing of witnesses, the inducement of witnesses to lie or the coaching of witnesses. Today’s judgment sends a clear message that the court is not willing to allow its proceedings to be hampered or destroyed.
"The chamber finds you guilty."
Bemba, vice-president in a transitional government from 2003 to 2006, was sentenced in June to 18 years in prison, becoming the highest-ranking politician to be convicted by the ICC.
The son of a wealthy businessmen with close ties to former Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Bemba founded and led the rebel Movement for the Liberation of Congo in Congo’s second civil war between 1998 and 2003.
In 2002, he sent MLC troops into the Central African Republic to help President Ange-Felix Patasse put down a rebellion. He was held accountable for his troops raping, murdering and pillaging there in 2002 and 2003.
Bemba was one of four vice-presidents in the transitional government at the end of the war and is still president of the MLC, one of Congo’s biggest opposition parties. He was runner-up to President Joseph Kabila in the second round of 2006 elections, winning 42% of the vote.
IFP, Bloomberg
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