Four of the ten most wanted former world leaders being hunted over their roles in crimes against humanity committed while in office are from Africa namely, The Gambia, Sudan, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia.
They are Gambia’s mercurial former ruler Yahya Jammeh now exiled in Equatorial Guinea after losing an election in 2016, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir who remains in jail since his ouster in 2019, Francois Bozize of the Central African Republic seeking refuge in Guinea-Bissau and Mengistu Hailemariam who has been Zimbabwe since he lost power in the early 1990s.
Justice Info last week published a damning list of what it calls ”a very exclusive club” of ten current and former world leaders with crimes against humanity charges hanging over their heads.
Among the non-African leaders are current Russian president Vladimir Putin and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ousted Syrian leader Bashar-al-Assad now exiled in Russia.
The heads of the former regime in Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, Taliban head Haibatullah Akhundzada, Burma are also declared wanted for multiple crimes against humanity in their countries.
The report provides a heat map pinpointing the ten leaders’ countries and where some of them are currently living in exile.
Regional leaders in West Africa have resolved to expedite the process of setting up a hybrid special tribunal to bring former President Yahya Jammeh to justice for a litany of egregious human rights violations thought to have been perpetrated under his 22-year rule which ended in 2016.
These abuses include killings, forced disappearances, torture, rape. Jammeh for whom an arrest warrant has never been issued denied any wrongdoing. The alleged violations during the span of his rule between July 1994 and January 2017 also include the summary execution of at least 240 people many of them political opponents and administering a false AIDS treatment to unsuspecting patients.
Meanwhile in the case of the imprisoned Bashir, an international arrest warrants was issued for him on 4 March 2009 and 12 July 2010 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague following charges of war crimes – looting and attacks against civilians – and crimes against humanity – for murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape.
He is also wanted by the ICC for ”genocide by killing, by causing serious bodily or mental harm, by deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction”.
The alleged crimes were said to have happened in Darfur, following an attack on El Fashir airport in 2003 and up until 14 July 2008.
Bozize, whose case is under the jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court (CPS) in Bangui face charges of crimes against humanity for massacres perpetrated between February 2009 and March 2013 by his presidential guard and other security services.
The charges also cover murder, enforced disappearance, torture, rape and other inhumane acts in the Bossembélé civilian prison and military camp in the centre of the country.
An international arrest warrant for the 78-year-old was issued on 27 February 2024.
Ethiopia’s Mengistu who was declared a fugitive following his 28 December 2006 sentence to life imprisonment in absentia by the Federal High Court, Addis Ababa was convicted of ”genocide and crimes against humanity during his years in power, notably during the “Red Terror” (purges of opposition groups and civilians) between 1977 and 1978”.
As the leader of the Derg, Mengistu was found to have played a lead role in ”conspiracy to destroy a political group and kill individuals by setting up commandos with the aim of decimating them”.
It was found by the court that over 2,000 people were killed, including members of the Ethiopian royal family while over 2,400 others were tortured.
According to Justice Info, the Ethiopian criminal code includes political groups in the concept of genocide.
