Judges at the International Criminal Court, ICC, on Wednesday convicted a former Seleka rebel leader from the Central African Republic of crimes against humanity including torture.
The court found Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, 56, guilty on four counts of crimes against humanity including persecution, torture and unlawful imprisonment for overseeing beatings and maltreatment as head of a feared prison unit in the capital Bangui as the country spiralled into civil war in 2013.
Prosecutors accused Said of running the Central Office for the Repression of Banditry, OCRB, detention centre in Bangui where suspected supporters of then-President Francois Bozize were beaten and tortured. He denied all charges.
Presiding Judge Miatta Maria Samba said Said and others oversaw beatings and torture of prisoners as part of a plan to target perceived Bozize supporters. She said a frequently used torture method was arbatachar, in which prisoners’ hands, elbows and feet were tied tightly together behind their backs, while others were beaten with ropes and whips and doused in water.
The court also heard that detainees were kept in a cramped, dark underground cell under Said’s office without sanitary facilities, where they had to urinate and defecate inside and the floor was covered in waste. Some were denied food and water and drank their own urine out of desperation.
The judges dismissed three war crimes charges, finding that at the time the alleged crimes were committed between April and August 2013 the armed conflict had already ended.
Said, who appeared in the courtroom in jeans and a blue sweatshirt, shook his head as the verdict was read. A separate hearing will determine his sentence, which could be life imprisonment.
The predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in 2013, ousting Bozize as part of the country’s long-running civil war, giving rise to opposing Christian-dominated anti-Balaka militias. The ICC has been investigating the violence in the Central African Republic since 2014. It has convicted two anti-Balaka leaders, but Said is the first Seleka member to be convicted.
