A lengthy-awaited courtroom installation to prosecute suspected battle criminals inside the Central African Republic postponed the start of its first trial on Tuesday as defense lawyers failed to reveal up, an AFP reporter saw.
The Special Criminal Court, a hybrid frame of the neighborhood and foreign magistrates installation in 2015 with UN backing, has been suffering for years to get going inside the face of logistical hurdles, lack of money, and hostility.
Its assignment is to attempt people suspected of warfare crimes and crimes towards humanity since 2003, the beginning of a duration of turmoil that persists to this day.
But its maiden session in the capital Bangui on Tuesday was postponed until next Monday in “the absence” of defence lawyers, presiding judge Aime-Pascal Delimo announced.
“We are suspending proceedings until April 25,” he said.
The opening trial concerns three members of a powerful armed group called 3R — Issa Sallet Adoum, Ousman Yaouba, and Tahir Mahamat, who are accused of the massacre of 46 villagers in northwestern CAR in May 2019.
Justice Minister Arnaud Djoubaye Abazene had proclaimed the trial as proof that the court “has finally entered its operational phase, signalling the end of impunity.”
But Enrica Picco of the Internationational Crisis Group (ICC) thinks tank said the delay “demonstrates that the (court’s) operational challenges are tough, despite the support from international donors.”
Euphrasie Nanette Yanduka, who heads a victims’ association, said, “Unfortunately, the lawyers for the butchers did not come… we are leaving (the courtroom) on an opening day today with tears in our eyes.”
One of the poorest and most volatile countries in the world, the CAR plunged into civil war in 2013 largely along sectarian lines.
Violence fell again in intensity in 2018 but as currently as early 2021, two-thirds of the country lay inside the hands of armed agencies spawned in the war.
President Faustin Archange Touadera is accused by France and its allies of turning to Moscow and the Russian private safety employer Wagner to shore up his role in trade for a proportion of the CAR’s mineral wealth.
