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About 150 people claiming to be victims of human rights abuses during political upheavals last year filed a suit on Thursday before a Belgian court against three top Ivorian officials for crimes against humanity, a human rights activist told IRIN on Thursday. The victims, alleging violations such as torture and rape, cited President Laurent Gbagbo, the ministers of the interior and defense, Emile Boga Doudou and Moise Lida Kouassi respectively, and former junta leader General Robert Guei, Ibrahima Doumbia of the Mouvement ivoirien des droits de l’homme said.
The plaintiffs are mostly men from northern Cote d’Ivoire, according to Doumbia, whose organisation helped them prepare their case. They joined together to form the Collectif des victimes de Cote d’Ivoire (Collective of Victims of Cote d’Ivoire) and filed their case in Brussels because of a 1999 law that makes Belgian courts competent to try foreign politicians accused of crimes against humanity.
Doumbia said the victims’ claim was not new as it has been well documented nationally and internationally. “One beneficial effect would be that security forces would no longer feel that they can go unpunished” as they see the country’s authorities being charged, Doumbia said.
More than 200 people died as a result of political violence in the past year, including 57 whose bodies were discovered in the suburb of Yopougon in late October 2000.
The Belgian law has also been used by people who suffered from repression in Chad under former president Hissene Habre, now exiled in Senegal.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions