Bemba was born in Bokada, Équateur Province in the North of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (‘DRC’) where his father was an important political figure before him. He is one of the richest men in the Congo, with an estimated fortune of several hundred million dollars. His businesses have included portable radios, aviation and private television stations. His father, Jeannot Bemba Saolona, was a businessman who was successful under former Zairien dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, and one of his sisters is married to Mobutu's son Nzanga, who was also a candidate in the 2006 presidential elections.

While the father moved over to support Laurent Kabila while he lived, his son remained a rebel dominating Equateur Province. During the recent presidential campaign, he denied allegations of cannibalism, after opponents claimed that he had eaten pygmies during fighting in 2002.

In this election, where he ran against Joseph Kabila for the Presidency, Bemba received substantial support in the western, Lingala-speaking portion of the country, including the capital, Kinshasa. Kabila’s strength was in the East, although much ado was made of Kabila’s alleged foreign roots. Following the vote there was significant tension as to whether the results would give Kabila a majority of the vote, in which case there would not be a second round against Bemba, who was perceived as Kabila's main opponent. However, according to results announced on 20 August, Kabila won 44% of the vote and Bemba won 20%, and therefore the two faced each other in a second round, held on October 29. The electoral commission announced the official results on November 15, naming Kabila the winner with 58.05% of the vote; Bemba's supporters have since alleged fraud.

On November 27, 2006, the Supreme Court of the DRC rejected the fraud charges brought by Bemba, and confirmed Kabila as the new elected Congolese President. A day later, Bemba said that he disagreed with the court's decision, but that he would make do by leading the opposition. He did not attend Kabila's swearing-in ceremony on December 6. On December 8, the MLC announced that Bemba would run for a Senate seat from Kinshasa in the January 2007 senatorial election, and he succeeded in winning a seat.

On Wednesday, 6 December 2006, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) swore in its first fair and freely elected president since independence from Belgium in 1960. Kabila won the run-off presidential elections on 29 October 2006 with 58 percent of the votes, compared with about 42 percent for former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba. Although the new president has been accused of continuing a trend of corruption and ignoring human rights violations and other abuses by his new ‘republican’ FARDC-army, Kabila is widely praised in Congo and abroad for bringing in a peace plan that finally ended the 1996-2002 period of wars.

The six-year civil and international war in Congo that has killed more than four million people and displaced another two million may have ‘officially’ ended, but the dying has certainly not. Every day in Congo, a deadly combination of conflict-related atrocities (in which rape is widely used as a weapon by all parties involved), starvation, poverty and disease kills over 1,200 people.

Despite leading the MLC party, Bemba was the warlord of a substantial military force which supported him during the hostilities which accompanied the conflict after the assassination of Laurent Kabila. There were four competing forces seeking hegemony in the DRC at the death of Kabila, Sr. The first was the loyalists of Kabila’s core supporters who supported Kabila, Jr. (under the strong guidance of his twin sister Jaynet and his mother, Mama Sifa). The major opponent in this struggle was the Banyamulenge General Lawrence Nkunda whose Tutsi fighters dominate the Eastern DRC. They are opposed there by the remnants of the Hutu Interahamwe and the Mayi-Mayi insurgents.

The war in the East officially ended with a ceasefire agreed on 23 January 2008 by the Kinshasa government and armed factions from North and South Kivu after a three-week conference in Goma. The arguments were heated but no solution was found for the underlying problem: the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), which consists of soldiers of the former regime in Rwanda and its genocidal allies in the Rwandan Hutu militias and Interhamwe and the troops of Nkunda. Peace required the dismantling of the military bands, under the auspices of the United Nation’s MONUC. This was a difficult task.

Except for the MLC, the pygmies and the Mayi-Mayi the armed factions are all ‘foreigners’; they are Hutu, Tutsi, Rwandans and others. There is little likelihood of them laying down their arms. Even the MLC refused to disarm.

On March 26, 2007 Kabila said that security could not be guaranteed through negotiation and referred to the importance of restoring order. He claimed Bemba's guards had tried to take over Kinshasa. Bemba warned of the potential for dictatorship and said that he might go into exile due to his security concerns. He said that the fighting had started as a result of an assassination attempt against him by soldiers who had surrounded his house. Hundreds of fighters loyal to Bemba, both in Kinshasa and the north of the country, reportedly surrendered following the fighting to be integrated into the army.

Late in the month it was reported that Bemba planned to travel to Portugal for treatment of a broken leg; he had already received treatment for his leg there in previous months. The Portuguese ambassador subsequently said on March 30 that Bemba was expected to go to Portugal for treatment, but was not going into exile there. The Senate approved the trip, for a period of 60 days, on April 9; Bemba promised to avoid politics while he was in Portugal. On April 11, Bemba was taken to the airport by U.N. MONUC forces and flown out of the country to Portugal, along with his wife and children. The next day the attorney general, Tshimanga Mukeba, said that he had requested that the Senate remove Bemba's immunity.

Following the outbreak of violence in March, Bemba's party, the MLC, said that it was being targeted by the government through arrests and intimidation, and that its headquarters was occupied by government forces. Bemba’s forces were largely isolated and Bemba was overseas. There were at least four attempts to cajole Bemba to return and his permit to be overseas was repeatedly renewed. By March 2008 Bemba announced that he was “in exile” and was not coming home.

On the 25^th of May 2008 the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) published its sealed indictment of Bemba and he was arrested for war crimes. It is very important to note that the ICC indictment is for war crimes committed in the Central African Republic, not the DRC. The ICC is silent about Bemba’s activities in the DRC and is not subject to any proceeding arising from his activities within the DRC political scene.

In 2002, President Ange-Félix Patassé of the Central African Republic (‘CAR’) invited the MLC to come to his country and put down a coup attempt. Human rights activists accused MLC fighters of committing atrocities against civilians in the course of this conflict  The civil war in the CAR was a mixture of failed colonialism on the part of the French and gross incompetence by Patasse. Ange-Félix Patassé (born January 25, 1937) was President of the Central African Republic from 1993 until 2003, when he was deposed by the rebel leader François Bozizé. Patassé was the first president in the CAR's history (since 1960) to be chosen in what was generally regarded as a fairly democratic election (1993) in that it was brought about by donor pressure on the Kolingba regime and assisted by the UN Electoral Assistance Unit. The main support came from France.

He was chosen a second time in a fair election (1999) as well. However, during his first term in office (1993-1999), three military mutinies in 1996-1997 led to increasing conflict between so-called "northerners" (like Patassé) and "southerners" (like his predecessor President André Kolingba). Expatriate mediators and peacekeeping troops were brought in to negotiate peace accords between Patassé and the mutineers and to maintain law and order. During his second term as president, Patassé increasingly lost the support of many of his long-time allies as well as the French, who had intervened to support him during his first term in office. Patassé was ousted in March 2003 and now lives in exile in Togo.

He had the support of most of his own Gbaya people, the largest ethno-linguistic group in the CAR, as well as the Kaba people of his "hometown" of Paoua and the Kare people of his mother. Most of his supporters lived in the most populous northwestern savanna regions of the CAR, and thus came to be called "northerners", whereas all previous presidents were from either the forest or Ubangi river regions in the south, and so their supporters came to be called "southerners". As a populist, Patassé promoted himself as a candidate who represented a majority of the population against the privileges of southerners who held a disproportionate number of lucrative jobs in the public and parastatal sectors of the economy. As President, Patassé began to replace many "southerners" with "northerners" in these jobs which infuriated many Yakoma people in particular who had benefited from the patronage of former President Kolingba.

The first mutiny began in May 1996. Patassé's government successfully regained control with the help of François Bozizé and the French, but his obvious dependency on the French against whom he had regularly railed, reduced his standing further. His subsequent use of Libyan troops as a body guard did nothing to help his reputation, either locally or with the donor community and the USA even closed their embassy temporarily. The last and most serious mutiny continued until early 1997, when a semblance of order was restored with the help of troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Mali, Senegal, and Togo. The Security Council of the United Nations approved a mission for peace, MINURCA, in 1998. MINURCA was made up of 1,350 African soldiers. These mutinies greatly increased the tension between "northerners" and "southerners" in the CAR and thus polarized society to a greater extent than before. In the presidential election of September 1999, Patassé won easily, defeating former presidents Kolingba and Dacko, winning in the first round with about 51.6% of the vote. Opposition leaders accused the elections of being rigged. There were failed coup attempts against him in 2001 and 2002, which he suspected Andre Kolingba and/or General François Bozize were involved in, but when Patassé attempted to have Bozize arrested, the general left the country for Chad with military forces which were loyal to him.

Patassé left the country for a conference in Niger in 2003, and in his absence Bozizé seized Bangui on March 15. Although the coup was internationally condemned, no attempt was made to depose the new leader. Patassé is now living in exile in Togo.

Although nominated as the MLPC's presidential candidate in November 2004, on December 30, 2004 Patassé was barred from running in the 2005 presidential election due to what the Constitutional Court considered problems with his birth certificate and land title. He was one of seven candidates barred, while five, including Bozizé, were permitted to stand. After an agreement signed in Libreville, Gabon on January 22, 2005, all barred presidential candidates were permitted to stand in the March 13 election except for Patassé, on the grounds that he was the subject of judicial proceedings. The MLPC instead backed his last prime minister, Martin Ziguélé, for president.

Patassé was accused of stealing 70 billion Central African francs from the country's treasury. He denied this and in an interview with Agence France-Presse on December 21, 2004, he stated that he had no idea where he could have found so much money to steal in a country with a budget of only 90-100 billion francs. He was also accused of war crimes in connection with the violence that followed a failed 2002 coup attempt, in which rebels from the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo led by Bemba came to Patassé's assistance, but were accused of committing many atrocities in the process. Patassé, the Congolese rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba and three others were charged in September 2004. However, the government of CAR was unable to arrest them, so the courts referred the matter in April 2006 to the International Criminal Court. This is the basis of the ICC indictment.

On 23 May 2008, Pre-Trial Chamber III issued a sealed warrant of arrest for Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo. Pre-Trial Chamber III found that there were reasonable grounds to believe that in the context of a protracted armed conflict in the Central African Republic from about 25 October 2002 to 15 March 2003, MLC forces led by Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo carried out a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population during which rape, torture, outrages upon personal dignity and pillaging were committed in, but not limited to, the localities of PK 12, Bossongoa and Mongoumba.

Pre-Trial Chamber III also found that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, as President and Commander in Chief of the MLC, was vested with de facto and de jure authority by the members of the MLC to take all political and military decisions.

According to the warrant of arrest for Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, he is criminally responsible, jointly with another person or through other persons, within the meaning of article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, on:

·          two counts of crimes against humanity: rape - article 7(1)(g), torture ‑ article 7(1)(f);

·          four counts of war crimes: rape ‑ article 8(2)(e)(vi), torture - article 8 (2(c)(i), outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment - article 8(2)(c)(ii), pillaging a town or place ‑ article 8(2)(e)(v).

Bemba is now in the custody of the ICC and will stand trial.

The Effects of Bemba’s Arrest

The decision to arrest Bemba for his activities in the CAR is a wise one in that it doesn’t involve any of his activities in the Congolese civil war, the cannibalism of pygmies, the rape and plunder of East Kivu or anything to do with Joseph Kabila. This means that the ICC will not examine or report on any events in the Congolese War but can try Bemba for his CAR activities.

To a large extent this re-integration of the MLC troops into the Congolese Army will have no great impediment. It doesn’t markedly change the balance of power in the Cold War in the East but, rather, strengthens Kabila as Bemba was, with Kabila, the warlord without a largely foreign group of fighters supporting him. Indeed, he was the Vice-President. On the grounds of patriotism and nationalism the co-operation with Kabila can proceed with the MLC. It will promote Kabila’s cause.

Many local political observers see in this the hand of France. Not only does Bemba’s arrest send a clear warning to Bosize that he had better co-operate with the French but it also puts on guard the Ugandan and Rwandan generals who orchestrated much of the Congolese civil war and the plundering of the DRC. Bemba is being charged primarily with the abuses his troops committed in the Central African Republic when they went there to prop up rebels fighting against the government. This is exactly the role of the Ugandan and Rwandan generals during the Congo War inside the DRC. As soon as Bemba declared his ‘exile’ most observers reckoned that he would be made to stand trial and punished. They are overjoyed that the items at trial are not his actions inside the DRC.

While this may not diminish the rapacity and violence in the Kivus and Katanga it will reduce by one a major player in the rapacity.