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French counterterrorism prosecutors said on Monday that police arrested the former leader of a rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for “complicity in crimes against humanity”.
Roger Lumbala, 62, is a former opposition MP who led the RCD-N party, an armed group suspected by UN investigators of carrying out extrajudicial killings, rapes and cannibalism during the war civil service from 1998 to 2002.
The charges relate to his actions in 2002 in the northeastern Ituri region, mainly against the Nande and Twa ethnic groups, prosecutors told AFP.
A United Nations report published in 2003 for the first time pointed out Lumbala, who became minister in his country’s transitional government between 2004 and 2005.
Lumbala, who denies the allegations, was arrested last week following a police investigation opened in December 2016.
French justice has the right to arrest and prosecute suspects in cases of crimes against humanity committed abroad.
After mounting a failed presidential candidacy in the 2006 elections, Lumbala saw his legislator’s mandate invalidated in January 2013 for repeated absence, as he reportedly spent a lot of time in Uganda and Rwanda.
The authorities of the Democratic Republic of Congo accused him of “high treason” and of complicity with the M23 rebels, defeated in November 2013 after an offensive by government and UN forces.
But he was allowed to return home in 2017 after a key deal to end a political crisis in the vast African country, one of the few accused figures whose freedom or return from exile has been agreed.
strawberries / jh / tgb
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