ICC Convicts Seleka Commander Mahamat Said of Crimes Against Humanity
On 23 September 2026, the International Criminal Court in The Hague convicted Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, 56, of crimes against humanity, including torture. The verdict was delivered by Trial Chamber VI, one of the Court's trial panels. Al Jazeera
Said was a senior figure in the Seleka coalition that ousted Central African Republic President Francois Bozize in 2013. The Court found he ran a Seleka detention facility in Bangui where Bozize supporters were rounded up and tortured during the 2013 civil war. Presiding Judge Miatta Maria Samba said Said oversaw torture at the Central Office for the Repression of Banditry in Bangui.
The judgment detailed the methods. Detainees were whipped, waterboarded and bound by a method called Arbatacher, in which hands, elbows and feet are tied together behind the back. Waterboarding simulates drowning. Some prisoners were held in underground cells with no bathrooms or showers. The floor was covered in waste smelling of faeces and urine.
The Chamber convicted Said on crimes against humanity charges including imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty, torture, persecution, and other inhumane acts. That category covers abuses carried out as part of a widespread or systematic attack on civilians. It acquitted him of three war crimes charges after ruling the armed conflict had already ended when some of the alleged crimes occurred. War crimes need a link to an ongoing conflict. A separate hearing will determine his sentence.
The case is listed as The Prosecutor v. Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, case number ICC-01/14-01/21. The Court said the judgment would be delivered live at 11:00 CEST on 23 September. Court records also identify him as Mahamat Said Abdel Kain and Mahamat Saïd Abdelkani. ICC
The procedural history spans more than seven years. An arrest warrant was issued under seal on 7 January 2019 for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Bangui in 2013. Said was surrendered to the ICC on 24 January 2021. On 9 December 2021, Pre-Trial Chamber II, acting like a filter before full trial, partially confirmed the charges. On 26 September 2022, he pleaded not guilty before the Court. Reuters
The ICC has investigated violence in the Central African Republic since 2014. On 24 July 2025, Trial Chamber V found Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona and Alfred Yekatom guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Bangui and western Central African Republic. Ngaissona, an anti-Balaka leader and former sports minister, was sentenced to 12 years. Yekatom, an anti-Balaka leader and former MP, was sentenced to 15 years. Said is the first Seleka member to be convicted by the ICC.
The broader context here is one of sequence and symmetry in the Central African Republic cases. The Court ruled first on anti-Balaka command structures, with custodial sentences of 12 and 15 years for Ngaissona and Yekatom, before entering a conviction against a Seleka detention authority. That order does not dictate Said's sentence, but it gives practitioners a reference range for gravity, command responsibility and detention conditions in the same situation. The acquittal on three war crimes counts, on grounds of when international humanitarian law applies, will also draw close reading. It separates crimes against humanity, which require a widespread or systematic attack, from war crimes, which require a link to an ongoing armed conflict. The sentencing hearing will test how the Chamber weighs systematic detention and torture against the partial acquittal, and how it positions Seleka criminality alongside the penalties already imposed on the other side.
