Congo seeks to lift former President Kabila's immunity over war crimes allegations

DAKAR, Senegal — Authorities in Congo have asked the country's Senate to lift the immunity of former President Joseph Kabila so that he can face trial on charges of supporting a rebel insurgency in the country's east, the justice minister said.

Justice Minister Constant Mutamba told reporters in the capital Kinshasa on Wednesday evening that Congo has amassed clear evidence implicating the former president in ''war crimes, crimes against humanity and massacres of peaceful civilians and military personnel" in the country's east.

Mutamba said the attorney general of Congo's army has asked the Senate to revoke the lifetime immunity from prosecution that Kabila enjoys as an ex-president and senator.

The former president is accused of ''treason, war crimes, crimes against humanity and participation in an insurrectional movement,'' the justice minister added.

Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi last year alleged Kabila was supporting the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels and ''preparing an insurrection'' in eastern Congo with them, a claim Kabila denies.

Kabila led Congo from 2001 to 2019, taking office at the age of 29 and extending his mandate by delaying elections for two years after his term ended in 2016. His father, former President Laurent Kabila, was assassinated in 2001.

Last month he returned to Congo after having left in 2023, in part due to deteriorating relations with the government of President Tshisekedi. He arrived in the rebel-held eastern city of Goma, where he was planning to ''to participate in peace efforts," according to one of his associates.

Congo's decades-long conflict escalated in January, when the M23 rebels advanced and seized the strategic city of Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu, which they took in February. The fighting has killed some 3,000 people and worsened what was already one of the world's largest humanitarian crises, with around 7 million people displace.

M23 is one of about 100 armed groups vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo near the border with Rwanda. The rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to U.N. experts.

Despite Congo's army and M23 having agreed to work toward a truce earlier this month, fighting continues in the eastern province of South-Kivu.

Ferdinand Kambere, the deputy secretary-general of Kabila's People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, said the justice minister's actions amount to ''relentless persecution.''

''For us, these mistakes that those in power keep making against the former president — thinking they are humiliating or intimidating him — actually show that the regime is nearing its end. They have nothing left to use against Kabila,'' Kambere told The Associated Press.