The Republic of Congo on Monday asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order France to freeze an investigation into allegations of torture by Congolese officials, claiming the probe violates international law.
Congo has been angered by an investigation launched by a French court in Meaux, near Paris, after human rights organisations and survivors lodged a complaint against several Congolese officials alleging they were involved in the disappearance of 350 Congolese refugees who returned to Brazzaville in May 1999.
Among the officials cited in the complaint are President Dennis Sassou Nguesso, Interior Minister Pierre Oba and the Congolese army inspector General Norbert Dabira.
Nguesso’s security forces detained the refugees, who had returned to the smaller of the two Congo’s which lies to the west of the vast Democratic Republic of Congo, after fleeing unrest in the country, wracked by a series of civil wars and militia conflicts throughout the 1990s.
The returning refugees have not been seen since.
In December last year Congo lodged a formal complaint against France with the ICJ — the highest judicial organ of the United Nations — mandated to settle legal disputes between states.
Brazzaville asked the ICJ to order a complete stop to the investigation but it usually takes months, if not years, before the UN court hands down a final judgement.
In the meantime Congo wants the court to order France to freeze the probe while the case goes through the ICJ.
Monday’s hearings are procedural and will only deal with the request to freeze the probe and not with the details of the central complaint.
Jacques Verges, the prominent French lawyer representing the Congolese delegation at the ICJ, argued Monday that the French probe violated international law, which states that a nation cannot exercise its jurisdiction over the territory of another state.
The French legal system should respect the immunity from persecution of the Congolese head of state, Verges argued.
Under French law and under the international Convention against torture signed by Paris, French courts have universal jurisdiction to deal with torture allegations if the accused is on French soil.
General Davira, one of the suspects in the case, has a residence in the Seine-et-Marne Departement near Paris.
But on Monday Congo asserted that France did not have universal competence in this case because the Congolese authorities had opened their own investigation into the disappearances ”since August 2002”, said Verges.
The Convention against torture states that if the country where the alleged crimes took place has already started a judicial investigation, other states do not have jurisdiction in the case.
But legal sources in Brazzaville have said repeatedly that the Congolese probe was only launched in June 2002 — after the complaint was lodged in France.
Verges asked the court to order a freeze of the investigation because it was harming Brazzaville’s international reputation.
France is due to address the court later Monday. – Sapa-AFP