{"id":29609,"date":"2016-10-21T02:03:38","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T02:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/ex-congo-vp-aides-guilty-of-bribery-during-war\/"},"modified":"2016-10-21T02:01:19","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T02:01:19","slug":"ex-congo-vp-aides-guilty-of-bribery-during-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/ex-congo-vp-aides-guilty-of-bribery-during-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Congo VP, aides guilty of bribery during war crimes trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Narcisse Arido (C) of the Central African Republic talks with his lawyer in the courtroom of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, on October 19, 2016.}<\/p>\n

International judges on October 19, 2016 found former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba and four aides guilty of corrupting witnesses, by bribing them with money and laptops to lie during the testimony to his war crimes trial. The case was \u201cabout clear, and downright criminal behaviour of the five accused\u2026 that resulted in serious offences against the administration of justice,\u201d judge Bertram Schmitt told the International Criminal Court as handed down the verdict.<\/p>\n

International judges on Wednesday found former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba and four close aides guilty of bribing and corrupting witnesses in a bid to derail his landmark war crimes trial.<\/p>\n

The case was \u201cabout the clear, and downright criminal behaviour of the five accused\u2026 that resulted in serious offences against the administration of justice,\u201d judge Bertram Schmitt told the International Criminal Court while handing down the verdict.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo legal system in the world can accept the bribing of witnesses, the inducement of witnesses to lie or the coaching of witnesses,\u201d he told the five men, who were all present in the court in The Hague.<\/p>\n

Each of the men stood in turn and remained impassive as Schmitt pronounced them guilty of most charges, although there were acquittals on some of the lesser charges against two of the defendants.
\n\u201cToday\u2019s judgement sends a clear message that the court is not willing to allow its proceedings to be hampered or destroyed,\u201d Schmitt said.<\/p>\n

And he further warned that those who sought to undermine the court would \u201cnot go unpunished\u201d.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors charged that from his prison cell, the ex-rebel leader Bemba masterminded a network to bribe and manipulate at least 14 defence witnesses to lie during his trial at ICC based in The Hague.<\/p>\n

Bemba was sentenced in June to 18 years in jail on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his militia in Central African Republic.<\/p>\n

Once the powerful leader of the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) and a wealthy businessman from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bemba, 53, remains behind bars in The Netherlands and is appealing his sentence.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s verdict came after Bemba was charged along with two of his lawyers, an MP from his party, and a defence witness of seeking to influence the main trial.<\/p>\n

It was the first such corruption trial in the ICC\u2019s history, and was launched after a tip-off to the prosecutors office.<\/p>\n

Bemba\u2019s lawyer Aime Kilolo, his legal case manager Jean-Jacques Mangenda, Congolese lawmaker Fidele Babala and Narcisse Arido, a defence witness were in the dock alongside the former Congolese strongman.<\/p>\n

All five had pleaded not guilty to more than 100 combined charges. Sentencing will be at a later date.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2018Coaching witnesses\u2019 \u2013
\nDuring the corruption trial, which opened last year, prosecutors provided evidence of telephone recordings, records of money transfers, emails and text messages which laid out the men\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

Bemba had authorised the scheme, the judge said, while Kilolo implemented his instructions and \u201ccoached\u201d witnesses about what to say on the stand in return for money.<\/p>\n

Mangenda tried to conceal the plan while Babala, deputy secretary of Bemba\u2019s MLC party, handled money transfers.<\/p>\n

Arido, who was an expert defence witness on military operations in the Central African Republic, also recruited witnesses for the defence and helped to coach them.<\/p>\n

The defence, however, had argued that the telephone recordings had been misinterpreted and insisted there was nothing wrong in paying witnesses as the prosecution did.<\/p>\n

Bemba\u2019s lawyer Melinda Taylor added that since he had been in detention he was \u201cnot in a position of power and had no effective access to information about what was going on the ground\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Narcisse<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Narcisse Arido (C) of the Central African Republic talks with his lawyer in the courtroom of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, on October 19, 2016.} International judges on October 19, 2016 found former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba and four aides guilty of corrupting witnesses, by bribing them with money and laptops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[99],"byline":[234],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-the-guardian"],"bylines":[{"id":234,"name":"The Guardian","slug":"the-guardian","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":78}],"contributors":[{"id":234,"name":"The Guardian","slug":"the-guardian","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":78}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29609"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29609"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}