Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday convicted two men of leading Christian-dominated militias in attacks on Muslims in the Central African Republic in 2013 and 2014 and sentenced them to up to 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Judges said Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, a former football executive, and militia commander Alfred Yekatom helped to lead a campaign of violence against Muslim civilians and convicted them of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture, forcible transfer and persecution of Muslim civilians.<\/p>\n
Both men pleaded not guilty at the start of their\u00a0trial in 2021.<\/p>\n
Judges ruled Ngaissona was a long-time leader of the mostly Christian militia forces known as “anti-Balaka”. He was sentenced to 12 years.<\/p>\n
Yekatom, nicknamed “Rambo”, commanded some 3,000 militia members and praised members of his militia who committed atrocities, the court found. He received a 15-year prison sentence.<\/p>\n
The anti-Balaka militia took up arms in 2013 in response to months of looting and killing by mostly Muslim Seleka rebels who had seized power in March the same year.<\/p>\n
The ICC has been investigating the violence in the Central African Republic since May 2014. A trial of one Seleka leader is under way at the ICC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday convicted two men of leading Christian-dominated militias in attacks on Muslims in the Central African Republic in 2013 and 2014 and sentenced them to up to 15 years in prison. Judges said Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, a former football executive, and militia commander Alfred Yekatom helped to lead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17108,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":8,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2362,1129],"tags":[4237,368,4236],"class_list":["post-17107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-alfred-yekatom","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-patrice-edouard-ngaissona"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}