France Arrests, Indicts Central Africa War Crimes Suspect
France has arrested and indicted a former guard of
deposed Central African Republic president Francois Bozize for "complicity
in crimes against humanity", anti-terrorist prosecutors said on Saturday.
Eric Danboy Bagale, 41, was arrested in eastern
France on Tuesday and placed under judicial investigation in Paris late on
Friday, prosecuting authority PNAT told AFP.
Bagale, who served in the presidential guard and
then as head of the anti-Balaka militia, was also indicted for "acts of
torture" and for "criminal association for the preparation of a war
crime" for acts committed between 2007 and 2014, PNAT said in a statement.
Bagale was taken into custody in Besancon on Tuesday
by the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes Against Humanity, Genocides
and War Crimes (OCLCHGCG).
Bagale was one of the "Liberators", the
name given to the guards of Bozize who brought him to power in 2003 by
overthrowing president Ange-Felix Patasse.
A member of the Gbaya ethnic group, like Bozize,
Bagale then became a senior figure within the Christian anti-Balaka militia set
up to fight the mainly Muslim rival armed group, the Seleka, that ousted Bozize
from power in 2013.
The fighting between the two sides, and the numerous
massacres perpetrated by them, plunged the CAR, one of the poorest countries in
Africa, into the third civil war in its history.
According to the UN, which accused both sides of war
crimes, between 3,000 and 6,000 people died, mostly civilians, between 2013 and
2015.
