An internationally backed court in the Central African Republic issued an international arrest warrant Tuesday for the country’s exiled former President François Bozizé for human rights abuses from 2009 to 2013, a spokesperson said.

The Special Criminal Court was set up in the capital, Bangui, to try war crimes and other human rights abuses committed during the coups and violence that the country has experienced since 2003.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC REPORTS 10,000 CHILDREN STILL FIGHTING WITH MILITANT GROUPS

Court spokesperson Gervais Bodagy Laoulé said the warrant was for crimes committed under Bozizé’s leadership in a civilian prison and at a military training center in the city of Bossembélém where many people were tortured and killed.

The warrant covers crimes from 2009 to 2013 by the presidential guard and other security forces, Laoulé said.

Bozizé current lives in exile in Guinea-Bissau, where that country’s President Umaro Sissoco Embaló told the Associated Press that he had not received any request from Bangui about the arrest warrant, and that the country’s laws do not allow for extradition.

Ibrahim Nour, whose father was tortured and killed in the infamous Bossembélé prison, welcomed the arrest warrant.

“Justice may be slow, but it will eventually catch up with the executioners. That’s why I welcome the arrest warrant for the men who killed my father, and for whom we are waiting for explanations so that we can begin to mourn,” Nour said.

The court was created in 2015, but took several years to begin operating. Human Rights Watch has described its creation as a landmark to advance justice for victims of serious crimes.

Patryk Labuda, an expert in international criminal law at the Polish Academy of Sciences, told the AP that the warrant issued Tuesday sends a message about the court’s intention to prosecute wrongdoing by the state.

“This arrest warrant is certainly one of the most high profile developments in the 5 years the court has operated,” Labuda said.

Bozizé seized power in a coup in 2003, and was ousted by predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels a decade later. That led to a civil war between the rebels and mostly Christian militias marked by sectarian violence atrocities and the forced use of child soliders.

Both the U.S. and the United Nations targeted Bozizé with sanctions for fueling the violence.

The U.N., which has a peacekeeping mission in the country, estimates the fighting has killed thousands and displaced over a million people, or one-fifth of the population. In 2019, a peace deal was reached between the government and 14 armed groups, but fighting continues.

About 10,000 children are still fighting alongside armed groups in Central African Republic more than a decade after civil war broke out, the government said earlier this year.

“It’s a great day for us victims to learn that François Bozizé is the target of an international arrest warrant,” said Audrey Yamalé, a member of the Association of Victims of the 2013 Crisis. “But let’s not stop there. We would like Guinea Bissau to cooperate in his extradition.”

Protesters detained as police head for Hamilton Hall, which students began occupying on Tuesday morning, and the main campsite.

Large numbers of New York City police officers have entered the campus of Columbia University in the latest escalation in the Gaza protests that have swept dozens of universities, mostly in the United States.

The New York Police Department received a notice from Columbia authorising officers to take action shortly before they entered the campus late on Tuesday night, a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press news agency.

Live television images showed police entering the campus in upper Manhattan, which has been the focal point of student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, in which more than 34,535 Palestinians have been killed.

After entering the campus, some officers approached Hamilton Hall, the administration building that students began occupying early on Tuesday morning after the management said it had begun suspending students who had refused to meet a deadline to disperse on Monday.

They renamed the building “Hind’s Hall”, in memory of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed in Gaza in February.

“We’re clearing it out,” police in a riot unit yelled as they marched up to the barricaded entrance to the building. Dozens more police marched to the protest encampment.

Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said in a post on X that the police officers were “wearing riot gear” and that “multiple blocks have been barricaded off”.

A long line of police officers were seen climbing into the building from the top of a truck into a second-storey window. Dozens of other officers targeted the nearby protest encampment.

Shortly afterwards, officers were seen leading protesters, their hands tied behind their backs with plastic zip ties, to police vehicles outside the campus gates.

“Free, free, free Palestine,” chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled “Let the students go”.

‘They’re students’

Dozens of protesters barricaded the entrances of Hamilton Hall after occupying Hamilton Hall on Tuesday.  A student organiser who spoke to Al Jazeera said that the occupation group was separate from the group that had established a camp on the campus lawn.

At an evening news briefing held a few hours before police entered the campus, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials alleged the Hamilton Hall takeover had been instigated by “outside agitators” who lacked any affiliation with Columbia and were known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.

Adams suggested some of the student protesters were not fully aware of “external actors” in their midst.

“We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful gathering to turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose. We cannot wait until this situation becomes even more serious. This must end now,” the mayor said.

One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, disputed the claims.

“They’re students,” he told the Reuters news agency.

The protesters are calling for the university to sell off any investments linked to Israel, be transparent about its financial ties to the country, and provide amnesty from any disciplinary measures to all students participating in the rallies.

Universities across the US are grappling with growing protests at the same time as they prepare for end-of-year graduation ceremonies.

On Tuesday, police also fired tear gas at students who set up a Gaza solidarity camp at the University of Southern Florida in Tampa, according to videos from journalists and witnesses verified by Al Jazeera.

The videos also show police forces arresting two people at the protest scene.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Tuesday announced an investigation into the federal funding for universities where students have protested the Israel-Hamas war, broadening a campaign that has placed heavy scrutiny on how presidents at the nation’s most prestigious colleges have dealt with reports of antisemitism on campus.

Several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support to the universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestine encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.

The House investigation follows several recent high-profile hearings that precipitated the resignations of presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. And House Republicans promised more scrutiny, saying they were calling on the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to testify next month.

“We will not allow antisemitism to thrive on campus, and we will hold these universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson at a news conference.

Nationwide, campus protesters have called for their institutions to cut financial ties to Israel and decried how thousands of civilians in Gaza have been killed by Israel following the deadly attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Some organizers have called for Hamas to violently seize Israeli territory and derided Zionism. Jewish students, meanwhile, have reported being targeted and say campus administrators have not done enough to protect them.

After Johnson visited Columbia last week with several other top House Republicans, he said “the anti-Jewish hatred was appalling.”

Republicans are also turning to the issue at a time when election season is fully underway and leadership needs a cause that unites them and divides Democrats. The House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has fallen flat and the Republican conference is smarting after a series of important bills left GOP lawmakers deeply divided. Democrats have feuded internally at times over the Israel-Hamas war and how campus administrators have handled the protests.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a floor speech Tuesday that it was “unacceptable when Jewish students are targeted for being Jewish, when protests exhibit verbal abuse, systemic intimidation, or glorification of the murderous and hateful Hamas or the violence of October 7th.”

Rep. Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat, at a news conference Tuesday said that it was important for colleges “to ensure that everybody has an ability to protest and to make their voice heard but they have a responsibility to honor the safety of individuals.”

“For many of Jewish descent, they do not feel safe, and that is a real issue,” he said, but added that he wanted to allow university administrators to act before Congress stepped in.

But the Republican speaker promised to use “all the tools available” to push the universities. Johnson was joined by chairs for six committees with jurisdiction over a wide range of government programs, including National Science Foundation grants, health research grants, visas for international students and the tax code for nonprofit universities.

Without Democratic support in the divided Congress, it is not clear what legislative punishments House Republicans could actually implement. Any bills from the House would be unlikely to advance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

But so far, the House hearings with university presidents have produced viral moments and given Republicans high-profile opportunities to denounce campuses as hotbeds of antisemitism. In December, the presidents of Ivy League universities struggled to answer pointed questions about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate each university’s code of conduct.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who posed the question in the December hearing, said it became the highest-viewed congressional hearing in history. She also cast the campaign against antisemitism as part of a broader conservative push against what they say is overt liberal bias at elite American universities.

“Enough is enough,” she said. “It is time to restore law and order, academic integrity and moral decency to America’s higher education institutions.”

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is also requesting that the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan appear at a hearing on May 23 that focuses on how they handled the recent protests.

“As Republican leaders, we have a clear message for mealy-mouthed, spineless leaders: Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of duty to your Jewish students,” said the committee chair, North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx.

At a hearing of the committee earlier this month, Columbia University’s president took a firm stance against antisemitism. But at the same time, a protest was underway on Columbia’s campus that would soon set off others like it nationwide. The university began suspending students this week in an attempt to clear the protest encampment on campus.

The university is also facing federal legal complaints. A class-action lawsuit on behalf of Jewish students alleges Columbia breached its contract by failing to maintain a safe learning environment.

Meanwhile, a legal group representing pro-Palestinian students is urging the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office to investigate whether Columbia’s treatment of the protesting students violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.