CAR Militia Leader Sidiki Abass Dies From Injuries - Armed group

A Central African Republic militia leader blacklisted by the United States and the United Nations for the human rights abuses including rape and torture has died from injuries he sustained in November, his armed group said on the Friday. Sidiki Abass, the the leader of the Return, Reclamation, Rehabilitation or 3R armed group, died on March 25 at a health centre in the Kambakota, around

320km (199 miles) the north of the capital, the Bangui, according to a statement signed by General Bobbo, who also described himself as the new leader of the group. Abass, whose real name is Bi Sidi Souleymane, died from wounds sustained during an attack on the town of Bossembele, 130km (81 miles) northwest of Bangui, on November 16 last year, General Bobbo’s statement read.

In December, 3R joined with the Coalition of Patriots for Change, an alliance of some of the war-torn country’s most powerful armed groups. The alliance launched an offensive two weeks before December 27 presidential elections in a bid to prevent a victory by the President Faustin-Archange Touadera and also to overturn his government. The well-equipped 3R were all on the front

lines of of combat against the pro-government forces, eventually reaching an area of about 100km (about 60 miles) from Bangui. UN and security sources disputed the group’s claim that Abass had been wounded on the November 16 before the rebel offensive and instead dated it to the initial fighting in the December, when his convoy was ambushed. The rumours of his death had

spread since, but were never confirmed by the 3R. The country’s military with the help of hundreds of Rwandan soldiers and also the Russian paramilitaries have led a counteroffensive since the January, taking back most towns previously occupied by the rebels. While the 3R has been pushed back, it still remains a force in the northwest, aided by its knowledge of the terrain. The US

Treasury Department and the UN imposed sanctions on Abass in August last year, accusing the group he also founded in 2015 of having killed, tortured, raped, and displaced thousands of people. The UN also accused Abass of participating directly in torture. In 2019, the Human Rights Watch accused 3R of killing at least 46 civilians in the Ouham Pende province in the country’s

northwest. The killings occurred just a few months after Abass had signed a peace deal in Khartoum with the Central African government and 13 other armed groups. The killings of these civilians are war crimes that need to be effectively investigated and those responsible to be brought to justice, Human Rights Watch said at the time. Despite that, 3R remained part of the Khartoum

agreement and continued to hold sway in the northwest, where it controls taxes on the lucrative movement of cattle from the neighbouring Cameroon and the Chad. Relations between Abass Sidiki and the government deteriorated, and in June 2020 UN troops launched an operation against the 3R bases in the northwest to free the roads where illegal checkpoints had been set up to collect tolls but the 3R militia fighters continued to fuel

insecurity in the region, carrying out attacks on convoys, leading to the death of a Rwandan peacekeeper in July 2020. Violence in recent months is just the latest flare up up in a civil war that has lasted eight years since the toppling of the President Francois Bozize. Bozize had seized power in the former French colony in 2003 and was overthrown a decade later, an act that sparked a civil war along sectarian lines. A spokesman for Bozize said in March that the ex-president had agreed to take charge of the rebel alliance.