The conviction and jailing of two Central African Republic (CAR) militia leaders by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity will hopefully bring a measure of justice and closure for the victims of a brutal campaign of violence targeting the Muslim civilian population.
“The conviction of the accused Yekatom and Ngaïssona is a strong message from the ICC that those responsible for atrocity crimes under the Rome Statute will be brought to justice and held to account. There can be no impunity for crimes violating the most fundamental tenet of international humanitarian law – the protection of civilians. Today’s judgment is a recognition of the extensive harm and suffering of the victims and the affected communities of CAR. It is a testament to the courage and resilience of the men and women who testified and cooperated with the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC,” said Mame Mandiaye Niang, the Deputy Prosecutor of the ICC, in a statement.
The ICC on July 24, 2025, delivered its verdict and sentence against Alfred “Rambo” Yekatom and Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona after finding them guilty of crimes including murder, attacks against a civilian population, forcible transfer, torture and other inhumane acts, and persecution between 2013 and 2014.
Yekatom, a former military officer who led his own Anti-Balaka group (a largely Christian self-defence militia), was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. Ngaïssona, a one-time government minister and sports official described as a key coordinator and financier of the Anti-Balaka movement, will serve 12 years.
In a procedural first for a case that went to full trial, Trial Chamber V of the ICC, led by Presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt, pronounced the sentences concurrently with the verdict, a new move intended to streamline the court’s lengthy processes.
Yekatom was found guilty of 20 counts, including murder, torture, persecution, forcible transfer, and directing attacks against civilians. Ngaïssona was convicted of 28 counts of aiding, abetting, or otherwise assisting in the commission of similar crimes, leveraging his influence and financial resources to support the Anti-Balaka’s coordinated attacks.
The verdict was not a complete victory for the prosecution. Yekatom was acquitted, by a majority decision, of the war crime of using child soldiers under the age of 15, with the court finding no reliable evidence to support the charge. Ngaïssona was acquitted of pillaging and directing an attack on a religious building in the town of Bossangoa, as well as the crime of rape.
Balancing gravity with mitigating factors
The written judgment reveals careful judicial reasoning behind the sentences, which fell significantly short of prosecution requests. The prosecution had sought minimum sentences of 22 years for Yekatom and 20 years for Ngaïssona, while the victims’ legal representatives sought 30 years for both.
The chamber’s sentencing analysis weighed several key factors, including both defendants’ partial cooperation with the court. The judgment noted their willingness to testify and provide information that assisted the prosecution. Additionally, the five years both men spent in pre-trial detention were credited against their sentences.
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The court also acknowledged the complex command structures within the Anti-Balaka movement. While finding both men bore significant responsibility for coordinating attacks, the judgment emphasised that the violence involved “many actors in a conflict lacking centralised control”. This decentralised nature of the militia groups appears to have influenced the chamber’s assessment of individual culpability.
The court also considered the broader context of CAR’s collapse, noting that both defendants operated within a country where state institutions had effectively disintegrated, leaving armed groups to fill the security vacuum.
A conflict ‘instrumentalised by religion’
In a lengthy summary, Judge Schmitt carefully contextualised the violence, stressing that the conflict was not inherently religious at its origin.
“The chamber finds it important to emphasise that it has not found the relevant conflict in the CAR to be of a religious nature at the outset,” he stated.
The judgment detailed how communities that had previously coexisted peacefully were deliberately polarised along religious lines. It all started when the Séléka coalition, which emerged around August 2012 under rebel leader Michel Djotodia, took control of Bangui on March 24, 2013. The group, composed mainly but not exclusively of Muslims and including elements from Chad and Sudan, committed widespread violence and abuses across the CAR, particularly against individuals associated with former President François Bozizé and non-Muslims.
“Many witnesses, non-Muslims and Muslims alike, have stated before the court that before the conflict, they lived together peacefully,” the judge noted. “However, the different groups and their leaders instrumentalised religion to gain political and economic power.”
Following the Séléka takeover, Bozizé and Ngaïssona fled to Cameroon as others fled to Zongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This group included Maxime Mokom, a former Cabinet minister and a former Anti-Balaka coordinator who was initially charged alongside Yekatom and Ngaïssona but was released in 2023 during the confirmation of charges process when the Prosecutor’s office withdrew the charges. From exile, they began planning an armed response to restore what they termed “constitutional order” – essentially Bozizé’s return to power.
The court found that Ngaïssona was actively involved in these planning meetings from August 2013, liaising with Bozizé and others to discuss strategies, reaching out to gain support, and providing financial assistance to armed groups. He knew of the advance of these groups and the accompanying hostilities, including killings and the displacement of Muslim civilians.
Simultaneously, self-defence groups were formed or reactivated across the CAR in response to the Séléka violence. These groups, initially separate but united by their opposition to the Séléka, gradually coordinated their activities and became known collectively as the Anti-Balaka.
“Because of religious and ethnic commonalities,” Judge Schmitt explained, “the Anti-Balaka perceive the Muslims in the CAR as collectively responsible for, complicit in, or supportive of the violence and abuses committed by the Séléka.”
This perception transformed a political and military conflict into widespread, systematic persecution of Muslim civilians.
“They started engaging in attacks against the Séléka from September 2013 onwards. The groups going to different localities communicated with each other and individuals abroad to coordinate the attacks. These individuals included Mokom. The attacks were not limited to Séléka forces. Instead, they included attacking localities with Muslim civilians, killing and dislocating many of them,” read the judgment.
The court found that Ngaïssona, from exile in Cameroon, was actively involved in planning the Anti-Balaka response, liaising with Bozizé and providing “financial assistance to those willing to assist in their activities”. He knew that the groups he supported were targeting Muslim civilians and provided funds for the coordinated attack on the capital, Bangui, on December 5, 2013.
Anatomy of terror
On that day, Anti-Balaka forces attacked Bangui and the northern town of Bossangoa. Yekatom initiated the assault in Bangui’s Boeing neighbourhood “by firing an automatic pistol into the air”. His forces then advanced on the local market, killing Muslim traders and attacking a mosque.
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Simultaneously in Bossangoa, Anti-Balaka groups targeted the “Muslim neighbourhood”, killing at least 18 people and forcing thousands to flee to a school, where they were trapped in “absolutely inhumane” conditions before being deported to Chad.
One of the most chilling incidents recounted was at a camp in Bangui’s Yamissi Kessely neighbourhood on December 24, 2013. Yekatom’s group apprehended seven people, including three women, at a checkpoint close to Yamwara School, perceiving them to be Muslim. On interrogation, one of the men, called Saint Cyr, who was unable to speak the dialect he claimed and was accused of being from Djotodia’s ethnic group, was subjected to torture.
Judge Schmitt described how they “beat Saint Cyr’s legs, broke them, and tied him up… Then one element cut off his toes, fingers and an ear” before he was taken away, never to be seen again.
The captives were told they would be “skinned like a papaya”, a phrase a surviving victim explained meant “we would be buried that day”. The court found that Yekatom later commended the perpetrator for having “done a good job” and, when asked about the victim, chillingly remarked, “they peeled the papaya”.
The terror continued into 2014 as Yekatom’s group advanced along the PK9-Mbaïki axis, “cleansing” towns of their Muslim populations. They set up checkpoints to identify and extort Muslims, forcing at least a thousand to flee to the town of Bimbo, where they lived in “great difficulty and in conditions of overcrowding, hunger and fear of death”.
The campaign culminated in the public murder of Bimbo’s deputy mayor on February 28, 2014. The man had refused to leave his home. The chamber reviewed video evidence showing the “unbelievable cruelty” of his killing and the subsequent mutilation of his body.
Victims’ voices and a path to justice
Throughout the reading of the judgment, Judge Schmitt gave voice to the enduring suffering of the victims. He quoted one witness from Bangui who said he can no longer visit his former home: “As soon as I go in the area, all this comes flooding back to me, and so I would spend a sleepless night then.”
“My country remains my country. Today […] I am suffering. My town is Bossangoa. […] I would like to return to Bossangoa, but peace has not been restored in Bossangoa. If I go back there now, I do not have a home. I have no way to survive,” read another witness’s testimony.
The path to justice for the victims began with the separate arrests of the suspects years after the conflict. Yekatom was surrendered to the ICC by the CAR authorities on November 17, 2018, following an arrest warrant issued for his alleged crimes. Ngaïssona, on the other hand, was arrested in France on December 12, 2018, under an ICC warrant and was transferred to the court’s custody on January 23, 2019.
Defence teams argued for time served, but the court’s analysis in the written judgment shows a methodical approach to proportionality. The chamber noted that while both leaders were instrumental in organising violence, the sentences needed to reflect not only the gravity of the crimes but also their individual degree of responsibility within the broader Anti-Balaka structure.
The written judgment, issued immediately after the hearing, contains what the court described as “the full and reasoned statement of the chamber’s findings and conclusions”.
After the conclusion of any appeals filed by either the defence or the prosecution, Yekatom and Ngaïssona will be transferred to a country or countries approved by the ICC to serve their sentence.
A case against Séléka commander Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, who was surrendered to the ICC on January 24, 2021, is still going on in Trial Chamber VI. He is facing crimes against humanity consisting of imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty; torture; persecution; enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts; and the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment.
