CAR: UN-backed court issues arrest warrant for ex-president Bozizé over crimes against humanity

A United Nations-backed Special Criminal Court (CPS) in the Central African Republic (CAR) has issued an international arrest warrant for the country’s exiled former president François Bozizé over alleged crimes against humanity committed by CAR’s military between 2009 and 2013.

According to the CPS, a hybrid jurisdiction located in the capital Bangui with Central African and foreign magistrates, Bozizé is wanted for possible human rights abuses and crimes including murder, enforced disappearance, torture, rape and other inhumane acts committed by the presidential guard and other security forces from 2009 to 2013, which is the period covered by the warrant.

The 77-year-old Bozizé seized power in the CAR in 2003 in a coup before being overthrown by rebels a decade later. That has resulted into a civil war in the former French colony, which included sectarian violence atrocities and the exploitation of child soldiers.

Bozizé, in exile in Guinea-Bissau since March 2023, now heads the CAR’s main rebellion with the new alliance of rebel groups called the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), formed in December 2020 in a bid to overthrow his successor, Faustin-Archange Touadéra. But Touadéra brought in fighters from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group and Russian operatives to push the so-called anti-Balakas militias backed by Bozizé away from Bangui. Guinea Bissau’s president Umaro Sissoco Embaló told the media that he had not received any request from Bangui about the arrest warrant, and that his country’s laws do not allow for extradition.