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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Congo rejects ex-warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba's presidential bid |
| 2018-08-26 |
| [DW] Congo's election commission has excluded opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba and three former prime ministers from the list of approved candidates for December's presidential election. Bemba, a former warlord, returned to the capital, Kinshasa, earlier this month to submit his candidacy for president after a decade in prison in The Hague for war crimes. He had been seen as one of the front-runners in the race to succeed incumbent Joseph Kabila. The commission said that a separate International Criminal Court conviction for witness tampering was the reason Bemba was left off the list. Bemba was acquitted earlier this year on appeal at the International Criminal Court of war crimes and crimes against humanity for murder, rape and pillage committed by fighters he sent to Central African Republic in 2002. His witness tampering conviction however, still stands. The election commission's decision was condemned by opposition parties and can be appealed before the final list is published in September. "Once again the current regime is showing its determination to suppress the electoral process," they said in a joint statement before the commission published the list on Friday. |
| Posted by:Fred |