{"id":23004,"date":"2018-11-23T23:23:27","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T23:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23004"},"modified":"2018-11-23T23:23:27","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T23:23:27","slug":"car-war-crimes-suspect-yekatom-appears-at-icc-alleges-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23004","title":{"rendered":"CAR war crimes suspect Yekatom appears at ICC, alleges torture"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A lawyer for war crimes suspect Alfred Yekatom<\/a>, a former militia leader accused of alleged atrocities against Muslims in the Central African Republic\u00a0(CAR<\/a>), has said his client had been tortured and was later forcibly transferred to The Hague.<\/p>\n

Yekatom, a member of parliament\u00a0previously nicknamed as “Rambo”,<\/span>\u00a0was arrested by local officials in the CAR on October 29 and handed to International Criminal Court\u00a0(ICC<\/a>) custody on November 17.<\/p>\n

At his first appearance before\u00a0ICC judges since his transfer to the Netherlands<\/a>, Yekatom on Friday confirmed his name, age and that he had read the charges in his arrest warrant. He was not required to enter a plea at the 35-minute hearing.<\/p>\n

Defence lawyer Xavier-Jean\u00a0Keita told the presiding judge, Antoine Kesia-Mbe\u00a0<\/span>Mindua, that Yekatom says he was beaten with a Kalashnikov rifle butt following his arrest last month after firing gunshots in the parliament in Bangui, the capital of the CAR.<\/p>\n

“The arrest was, according to him, brutal,” Keita told the court.<\/p>\n

“He was tortured, he says, he was beaten with Kalashnikovs and rifle butts, and he still has visible signs of the beating,” the lawyer added.<\/p>\n

“The medical team at the ICC detention centre has observed this.”<\/p>\n

April hearing<\/h2>\n

Yekatom\u00a0<\/span>faces 14 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, mutilation, torture, cruel treatment and recruiting child soldiers into his so-called “Anti-balaka” militia group.<\/p>\n

The group is accused of attacks on Muslims between December 2013 and August 2014.<\/p>\n

Yekatom said the first he had known about the war crimes charges was when he arrived in The Hague<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“No one said anything to me, I was at parliament and there was a bit of trouble there. Then, they arrested me and sent me here,” the ex-fighter, wearing a suit and listening to a translation of the proceedings on headphones, told the court.<\/p>\n

“When I got here on Sunday I was given some documents and I read the charges. No one said anything to me there, it was only here that I was told.”<\/p>\n

Yekatom’s lawyer added that his “fundamental rights had been violated” because he had been denied access to a judge in the CAR, and the first time he had seen a lawyer was on Monday at the ICC.<\/p>\n

The court will hold an official hearing to confirm the charges on April 30, 2019, Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua said.<\/p>\n

The judge said he could not immediately deal with the allegations of torture.<\/p>\n

“You have raised a very important problem and we cannot deal with it orally. We have to have written submissions, at this stage, we cannot discuss this question, nor resolve it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lawyer for war crimes suspect Alfred Yekatom, a former militia leader accused of alleged atrocities against Muslims in the Central African Republic\u00a0(CAR), has said his client had been tortured and was later forcibly transferred to The Hague. Yekatom, a member of parliament\u00a0previously nicknamed as “Rambo”,\u00a0was arrested by local officials in the CAR on October…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}