The alleged crimes include murder, enforced disappearance, torture, rape, and other inhumane acts, according to the Special Criminal Court set up in the capital Bangui to try war crimes and other human rights abuses committed in the country since 2003.

A United Nations-backed court in the Central African Republic on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant Tuesday for the country’s exiled former President François Bozizé over possible crimes against humanity committed by the military between 2009 and 2013.

The Special Criminal Court (CPS) was set up in the capital Bangui to try war crimes and other human rights abuses committed since 2003 in the country, which has endured civil wars and authoritarian regimes since independence from France in 1960.

The alleged crimes include murder, enforced disappearance, torture, rape, and other inhumane acts, according to the court – a hybrid jurisdiction with Central African and foreign magistrates.

Bozizé seized power in Central Africa in 2003 in a coup before being overthrown 10 years later. The 77-year-old now heads the country’s main rebellion and has been in exile in Guinea-Bissau since March 2023.

The international warrant was issued on February 27, according to CPS, which was set up in 2015 with UN sponsorship. The court is calling for Guinea-Bissau’s cooperation to “arrest” and “hand over the suspect”. 

Court spokesperson Gervais Bodagy Laoulé said the warrant was for crimes committed by Bozizé’s presidential guard between February 2009 and March 2013 at a civilian prison and at a military training centre in the city of Bossembélém where many people were tortured and killed.

The court’s magistrates concluded there was “serious and consistent evidence against [Bozizé], likely to incur his criminal liability, in his capacity as hierarchical superior and military leader”.

Amnesty International said in a statement that the warrant “constitutes an encouraging step in the quest for justice for the victims of numerous crimes committed in the Central African Republic.” It called on Guinea-Bissau to turn Bozizé over “without delay” to the Central African authorities.

Guinea Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embaló has told the Associated Press that he had not received any request from Bangui about the arrest warrant and that his country’s laws do not allow for extradition.

Bozizé was ousted by predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels a decade after seizing power in 2013. That led to a civil war between the rebels and mostly Christian militias marked by sectarian violence atrocities and the forced use of child soldiers. Bozizé had set up the militias, known as anti-Balakas, to regain power.

Both the US and the UN targeted Bozizé with sanctions for fueling the violence.

The UN, which has a peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, estimates thousands of civilians were killed in the war and over a million others displaced. In 2019, a peace deal was reached between the government and 14 armed groups, but the country still suffers bouts of violence and remains deeply poor.

About 10,000 children are still fighting alongside armed groups in the Central African Republic more than a decade after civil war broke out, the government said earlier this year.

Bozizé leads a new alliance of rebel groups called the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), formed in 2020 in a bid to overthrow his successor Faustin-Archange Touadéra.

But Touadéra brought in fighters from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group as well as Russian operatives to push them away from Bangui.

Bozizé was sentenced in absentia in September to forced labour for life for conspiracy, rebellion, and murder.