Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former warlord and vice president of the DR Congo, has been barred from the December’s presidential election by his country’s highest court.
Bemba had been tipped as one of the potential replacements for long term president, Joseph Kabila.
“The constitutional court… confirms the ineligibility of Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo for suborning witnesses by resorting to bribery,” said the court’s president, announcing the ruling.
He was excluded from standing for election because of a witness tampering conviction at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Later this month the international court i will sentence him for bribing witnesses during his war crimes trial.
The ICC had sentenced him to 18 years in prison in 2008 for murders and rapes committed by his militia in neighboring Central African Republic in the early 2000s.
But he returned to DRC after being acquitted of war crime charges by the ICC, a conviction for which he spent nearly a decade behind bars.