While being in the dock as the most high profile war crimes suspect at the International Criminal Court, Jean Pierre Bemba Gombo’s stepmother passed away in early January. On Monday, judges in The Hague allowed him to attend the requiem mass in Waterloo, Belgium.

By Thijs Bouwknegt

Bemba attended his stepmother’s funeral with his wife and five children, who live in Belgium. But despite the secrecy surrounding his release, some five hundred people had gathered at Waterloo’s Saint-Paul Church, including Congo’s Deputy Prime Minister Mobutu Nzanga. A good number of Belgian and Congolese journalists covered the event, with flashing cameras mainly pointed at Bemba.

Bemba, who is on trial at the ICC for overseeing a campaign of murder, rape and plunder in the Central African Republic (CAR), was back in The Hague at the end of the day. His trial resumed Tuesday, with a witness recounting how Bemba’s soldiers gang-raped her, killed her brother and looted property from their house in the CAR’s capital Bangui. With a psychologist on her side, ‘Witness 87’ testified incognito and with voice distortion.

It was the second time that Bemba was allowed to attend a funeral in Belgium. He travelled to Brussels after his father passed away in July 2009 while being in pre-trial detention. ICC prosecutors raised their objections to Monday’s release because they were concerned it would enable Bemba to identify prosecution witnesses. They also cited risks that he would not return to court.

But ultimately the three judges hearing Bemba’s case allowed him to go to Belgium for “humanitarian reasons”, albeit under strict conditions. Bemba, accompanied by court officials, was only allowed to communicate with close family members, and had to pay for the journey out of his own pocket.

Bemba, 48, has worn many hats: business tycoon, warlord, vice-president. Currently, he still has a seat in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s senate. He stands trial for ordering his Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) militia to rape, murder and plunder in the CAR. He got involved in the CAR in 2002 when President Ange-Félix Patassé asked him to help fight a rebellion by then-General François Bozizé. During the brutal conflict that unfolded, all sides committed large-scale human rights violations against civilians. Bemba’s troops - better known in the CAR as Banyamulengue - left the country in March 2003. Bozizé took power after a coup while Pattasé went into exile in Togo.

Until now, Bemba is the only person to go to trial for atrocities committed in the CAR. Human rights organisations have criticised ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo for only indicting Bemba and not going after Central African suspects. Critics have also called it a “missed opportunity” that court prosecutors did not charge Bemba with any crimes his MLC forces allegedly committed in the DRC’s Ituri region.

Bemba spent his privileged childhood in Brussels, Kinshasa and the northern Congolese border town of Gbadolite. After studying business in Brussels, he soon managed to become one of the richest men in the DRC in the 1990s when he was former President Mobutu Sese Seko’s personal assistant. But following the 1997 takeover by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the multi-millionaire fled to Uganda where President Yoweri Museveni helped him create his rebel group. In just a few months, the group captured and controlled parts of northern DRC during the 1998-2003 civil war and made Gbadolite its headquarters.

Bemba laid down his weapons in 2003 and was elected one of the four vice-presidents within the Congolese transitional government. In 2006 he ran for president but lost, with very narrow margins, from Joseph Kabila. The following year Bemba was elected as senator. Meanwhile, relations between him and Kabila soured, culminating in clashes between the army and Bemba’s militia later that year. Bemba fled to Portugal, and was arrested in 2008 in Brussels.

It took almost three years for the case to go to trial. Bemba’s lawyers contend that the case is politically motivated in order to remove him from future elections. They have tried to challenge the admissibility of the case, arguing that in 2004 a Bangui court decided not to start proceedings for the same crimes. ICC Appeals judges, however, in October 2010 paved the way for the trial to start, citing orders from both Bangui’s Appeals Court and Court of Cassation who had ruled that the case should be referred to the ICC.

As Bemba is on trial, the CAR’s former enemies Bozizé and Pattassé have entered the stage of a new battle as both stand candidate for this month’s polls. Posters and banners, carrying their names, went up Monday as campaigning kicked off for presidential and legislative elections on January 23rd.

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