A Belgian judge, Damien Vandermeersch, is to issue an arrest warrant for DRC Foreign Minister Yerodia Abdoulaye Ndombasi on charges of inciting racial hatred and genocide, a spokesman for the Belgian foreign ministry said. According to Reuters news agency, the minister is accused of inciting hatred against ethnic Tutsis in August 1998 in speeches using words such as “vermin” and “extermination”. Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel last weekend DRC President Laurent-Desire Kabila about the impending warrant. “The minister, in order to prevent too much diplomatic damage, informed the Congolese President that a Belgian judge was on the point of delivering an arrest warrant soon against Yerodia,” the Belgian foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters. A law passed in 1993 gives Belgian courts jurisdiction over grave human rights violations outside Belgium and it was extended in 1999 to cover genocide.
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