Conflict-ravaged country hopes trials at new court in Bangui will at last punish those responsible for massacres and rape. The moment they entered town, the rebel soldiers started firing on civilians. As terrified crowds fled into nearby woods, a year-old disabled woman called Monique Douma realised she was trapped. Fighters from the 3R armed group tied up and then killed dozens of men. Douma suffered fatal injuries in the blaze; the body of a year-old girl was later found with a single bullet to her head.
By the end of it, at least 46 civilians were dead. Many of the militants remain free. Corrupt, dysfunctional courts mean that thousands of victims of brutality are routinely denied justice. About miles away, a new development in the capital, Bangui, could signal a change.
On Rue Martin Luther King Jr, behind a concrete wall painted with the scales of justice, a courthouse is being overhauled. Ringed by razor wire, this construction site is part of a bold experiment to begin to pull this crisis zone back from the brink. To be known as the special criminal court SCC , an ambitious institution is being set up in a country scarred by ethnic cleansing and war crimes, the lead actors of which remain at large.
This February, rebel groups and the government signed a peace deal β the eighth attempt to resolve the six-year conflict. Nine months on, violence involving signatories of the treaty is rising. Another group, the UPC, has advanced into south-eastern areas, breaching the ceasefire, drawing condemnation from the UN and raising tensions with local anti-balaka militants.
Prosecutors at the embryonic SCC are now tasked with indicting militants for crimes in CAR since the coup, and hope their endeavours will mark the denouement of this bloody tragedy, fuelled in part by a culture of impunity.
