Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo fired tear gas at protesters against a visit on Sunday by opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba who made a low-key return home, flying in from Brussels on a private jet.
Bemba’s allies said he had returned to the DR Congo to lend support to another opposition figure, Martin Fayulu, who maintains he was robbed of victory in last December’s presidential election.
After that vote, another opposition figure Felix Tshisekedi was declared the new president in the country’s first peaceful transition of power since independence from Belgium in 1960, but the vote was marred by allegations of ballot-rigging.
Police on Sunday fired tear gas to break up rock-throwing protesters who targeted Bemba’s convoy as it arrived from the airport to Kinshasa’s Sainte-Terese square where Bemba spoke, AFP correspondents at the scene said.
Some pelted Bemba’s procession with rocks at the popular district square where thousands turned out to listen to the former warlord.
“Jean-Pierre Bemba returned to lend a hand to Martin Fayulu,” Eve Bazaiba, a close Bemba ally said at the rally.
The crowd this time was far smaller than the thousands who turned out to greet Bemba the first time he returned from exile, in August last year, after 11 years out of the country.
On that occasion, Bemba only stayed a few days to file his candidacy for the presidential election.
After the electoral commission rejected his candidacy, he threw his support behind Fayulu.
A former vice-president, Bemba ran unsuccessfully for the presidency against former leader Joseph Kabila in 2006.
He was then jailed by the International Criminal Court based in The Hague for alleged atrocities carried out by his troops in the Central African Republic. But he was finally acquitted and freed on appeal in June 2018, when he returned to Belgium.
The opposition Lamuka coalition he has formed with Fayulu and another senior figure, the former governor of Katanga province, Moise Katumbi, is showing signs of strain.
Fayulu insists he only lost the presidency because a deal was agreed between outgoing president Kabila and the man who succeeded him, Tshisekedi.
Leaders of the Lamuka coalition are planning demonstrations next Sunday to protest against the Constitutional Court’s ruling to invalidate the election of 20 of their deputies.

‘Terminator’ faces war crimes judgment at The Hague tribunal

Congolese ex-warlord Bosco Ntaganda will face judgment before the International Criminal Court next month for allegedly overseeing massacres and using children in his rebel army, the tribunal said yesterday.
Ntaganda, nicknamed “Terminator”, is accused of masterminding the slaughter of civilians by his soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s volatile northeastern Ituri region in 2002 and 2003.
The Hague-based ICC said in a statement that it “will deliver its judgment in the case of Bosco Ntaganda on July 8 at 10am”. “At the hearing the Trial Chamber will announce whether it finds the accused innocent or guilty beyond reasonable doubt,” it added.
Ntaganda, 45, is facing 13 counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity for his role in the brutal conflict that wracked the mineral-rich Ituri region.
More than 60,000 people have been killed since the violence erupted in the region in 1999 according to rights groups, as militias battled each other for control of scarce mineral resources.
Prosecutors said Ntaganda was central to the planning and operations for the Union of Congolese Patriots rebels and its military wing, the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC).  During his three-year trial, prosecutors said the FPLC killed at least 800 people as it battled rival militias in Ituri.
Prosecutors also showed horrific images of victims who were disembowelled and had their throats slit.
The soft-spoken Ntaganda however told judges he was a “soldier, not a criminal”, adding that the “Terminator” moniker did not apply to him.
Known for his pencil moustache and a penchant for fine dining, Ntaganda is also an ex-general in the Congolese army.
Rwandan-born Ntaganda then became a founding member of the M23 rebel group, which was eventually defeated by Congolese government forces in 2013.
The first-ever suspect to voluntarily surrender to the ICC, he walked into the US embassy in Kigali and asked to be sent to the court, based in the Netherlands.
The ICC was set up in 2002 as an independent international body to prosecute those accused of the world’s worst crimes.
But it has suffered several setbacks over recent years with some of its most high-profile suspects walking free, while it has also been criticised for so far mainly trying African suspects.
Ntaganda’s former FPLC commander Thomas Lubanga was sentenced to 14 years in jail in 2012 — the second conviction by the court since being set up 17 years ago.
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