Members of Bozizé’s security forces are alleged to have committed crimes including murder, enforced disappearances, torture, and rape.

Bozizé, 79, who seized power in a 2003 coup before being overthrown 10 years later by rebels, has been living in exile in Guinea-Bissau since March 2023, News.Az reports, iting RFI.

But three of his former senior military officers, Eugene Barret Ngaikosset, Vianney Semndiro and Firmin Junior Danboy, are all in pre-trial detention in the Central African Republic.

The case will be heard by the Special Criminal Court (SCC), a hybrid jurisdiction located in the capital Bangui with Central African and foreign judges.

Thousands of civilians were killed and both sides have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the United Nations.

At the end of 2020 Bozizé took over a new rebel alliance, the Coalition of Patriots for Change, which threatened the power of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra before Russia deployed hundreds of paramilitaries from the Wagner private mercenary company, enabling the government to push them back.

Bozizé then went into exile, first in neighbouring Chad and later in Guinea-Bissau.

He was sentenced in absentia in September 2022 to forced labour for life for conspiracy, rebellion and murder.

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli