Lydia Polgreen and Marlise Simons report in today’s New York Times:
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague said Tuesday that he would investigate human rights violations committed during a brutal crackdown after a coup attempt in the Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003.
The investigation by the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, will focus on at least 600 rapes, along with killings, beatings and other abuses reported during a five-month period after an unsuccessful revolt against the government of then-president Ange-Félix Patassé. The coup attempt was led by François Boizize, a general who ultimately seized power in 2003 and remains president.
The investigation is unique in that it focuses primarily on rape rather than on killings. Sexual violence has been a prominent feature of many conflicts in Africa in the past 15 years, and countless thousands of women have been raped in conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Rwanda and Uganda, among other countries, but prosecutions for such crimes, except in Rwanda, have been rare.
“Rape is the most notorious issue here,” said Mr. Moreno-Ocampo in a telephone interview. “There are killings, but there are four times more rapes than killings. We are talking about mass rapes, gang rapes, hundreds of cases that took place within a few days.”