Hassan Bouba, Central African Minister of Livestock and Animal Health was arrested Friday morning in the office of his ministry by the judicial police, according to several sources familiar with the matter who requested anonymity.
Former special advisor to the current head of state Faustin Archange Touadéra, but also a former rebel leader, he is imprisoned on charges of war crimes and against humanity by the Special Criminal Court of this country.
Among the poorest in the world, the African state has been the theater, since 2013, of a civil war that was initially very deadly but which considerably decreased in intensity after 2018. Hassan Bouba had been number 2 in one of the most formidable rebel armed groups, the Union pour la Paix en Centrafrique (UPC), before coming to power in 2017.
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The "
order for the purposes of incarceration
" of the Special Criminal Court (CPS) consulted by AFP, no more than anonymous sources, do not specify what are the facts which are worth these "
charges
"
to Mr. Ali Hassan
. But last August, the American NGO The Sentry said after a very detailed investigation that the head of the UPC, Ali Darassa, and his number two at the time, Bouba Ali Hassan, were directly responsible for the he attacked a camp for displaced people in November 2018 in Alindao, some 500 km east of Bangui, which resulted in the death of at least 112 villagers including 19 children.
The charges are extremely heavy and even present him as one of the alleged perpetrators of massacre and torture: "
War
crimes
" and "
crimes against humanity by murders, inhuman acts
" and "
cruel treatment such as torture
", reads. one in the order of the judges of the SPC who interviewed him on Friday and ordered his "
provisional imprisonment
" immediately thereafter.
The CPS is a hybrid court, made up of Central African and international magistrates, responsible for judging in Bangui the serious human rights violations committed since 2003 in this Central African country.
