{"id":154432,"date":"2026-01-19T11:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T10:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/?p=154432"},"modified":"2026-01-19T11:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T10:51:13","slug":"universal-jurisdiction-as-justice-the-lumbala-trial-in-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/154432-universal-jurisdiction-as-justice-the-lumbala-trial-in-question.html","title":{"rendered":"Universal Jurisdiction as Justice: the Lumbala trial in question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The trial of Congolese Roger Lumbala before a Paris court ended last year with a heavy conviction. It raises issues relating to procedure and principles of law observed in universal jurisdiction trials in an even more acute manner, given that the defendant refused to attend his trial, during which he had no defence, and accused the court of colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

On 15 December 2025, an assize court in Paris found Congolese former rebel Roger Lumbala guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between 2002 and 2003. He was sentenced to 30 years\u2019 prison. The case has been covered extensively by Justice Info<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lumbala\u2019s conviction has been celebrated by victims\u2019 rights organizations. According to the Baltasar Garz\u00f3n International Foundation, which advocates universal jurisdiction<\/a> trials, it has been a \u201clandmark ruling<\/a> [that] marks a significant milestone in the fight against impunity for crimes committed during the Second Congo War.\u201d The charges addressed\u00a0Operation\u00a0\u201cEffacer le tableau\u201d<\/a> (Wipe the Slate Clean), a military campaign that terrorised eastern Congo in 2002 and 2003.\u00a0International organizations and civil society\u00a0groups have recorded atrocity crimes in the DRC for decades. This work is reflected in the\u00a02010 UN Mapping report<\/a>, a seminal document which detailed the violence in the country between 1993 and 2003.\u00a0Regardless, Lumbala is arguably only the third person, after Germain Katanga<\/a> and Bosco Ntaganda<\/a>, to be held responsible either internally or internationally for the extensive, devastating violence directed against civilians in DRC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the verdict represents accountability after decades of impunity, the case also exposes the downsides of universal jurisdiction practices. These shortcomings are both principled, in terms of the purpose of criminal punishment, and procedural, in terms of how accountability is balanced against the defendants\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Procedural Risks: Ensuring the Rights of the Defence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Public trials serve several social roles. As exercises in rule of law transparency, they communicate what sort of behaviour is criminal while simultaneously ensuring the defendant\u2019s rights. Defendant\u2019s rights begin with the presumption of innocence, which requires the prosecution to prove guilt \u201cbeyond a reasonable doubt\u201d (common law) or \u201cintime conviction<\/em>\u201d (French law). Defendants also enjoy the right to a fair trial which includes legal representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the start of trial, Lumbala and his attorneys vigorously contested the right of the Paris court to hear the case, raising arguments that had been heard, and rejected, prior to trial. At the end of the first day of trial, having failed to obtain with these arguments, Lumbala \u201cfired\u201d his attorneys, announced that he did not recognise the court\u2019s jurisdiction, and refused to participate in the trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with an absent defence, the judge ordered Lumbala\u2019s attorneys to serve the court as \u201ccommis d\u2019office<\/em>\u201d appointed by the court to serve the interests of the defence. Lumbala\u2019s attorneys refused the court\u2019s request<\/a>, arguing that it would breach their professional responsibilities to act so blatantly in opposition to their client. For the remainder of the trial, the defence bench sat empty, with neither Lumbala nor his attorneys in attendance.<\/p>\n\n\n\t

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We have seen \u201ccommis d\u2019office\u201d counsels in relation to atrocity crimes before, most notably in the work of the Chambres africaines extraordinaires<\/a>, the special court established in Senegal that tried, and convicted, Chad\u2019s ex-president Hiss\u00e9ne Habr\u00e9 in 2016. In that case, attorneys appointed by Habr\u00e9 also utilized what is termed \u201cdefense de rupture<\/em>,\u201d challenging the process of the trial itself by refusing to participate. At the opening of the Habr\u00e9 trial, therefore, the court adjourned for 45 days while it appointed defence counsels to represent Habr\u00e9\u2019s interests, against his will. Habr\u00e9 did not cooperate with or recognize these attorneys. Nonetheless, they represented his \u201cinterests\u201d before the court by raising legal challenges in his name<\/a>. These challenges included procedural challenges, i.e. ways in which the Habr\u00e9 court\u2019s actions violated the procedural rules under which it was constituted, as well as content challenges, for example to proof and witness statements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Paris court asked Lumbala\u2019s appointed attorneys to both represent the interest of the court and the interest of the defendant and they refused. Instead of adjourning the proceedings to appoint other counsels, incurring further delays in an already years\u2019 long process and sacrificing the resources already employed in constituting the jury, scheduling the witnesses, and reserving the court\u2019s time, the Paris court continued the trial, concluding on schedule with a conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trials in absentia are permissible in France. Moreover, the system is designed to represent the defendant\u2019s interests throughout the whole judicial process, meaning that the dossier that makes it to trial includes the defendant\u2019s arguments. Nonetheless, the absence of a participating defence clearly stymied the judge president, who paused the proceedings several times, asked the victims lawyers and the prosecutors for their observations, and muttered various versions of \u201cthis is nuts!\u201d in the days that followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Principled Risks: The Purpose of Criminal Prosecution and Punishment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Criminal punishment serves both an individual, anti-recidivist agenda as well as a collective, communicative agenda. Criminal law professionalizes vengeance, moving private conflicts into the sphere of the state. By routinizing and standardizing punishment, criminal law transforms individual convictions into broader social messaging regarding what sorts of behaviour is permissible, seeking to deter impermissible behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

International criminal law justifies individual trials in similar terms, even though many of the rationales legitimizing criminal law as social control are absent. Universal jurisdiction, wherein international atrocity crimes are tried in third countries, cannot address these absent justifications. A central communicative element of domestic criminal law is predictability, establishing what behaviour is impermissible and subject to punishment. Universal jurisdiction does not predictably address criminality through punishment, however. This is because it is by necessity opportunist, trying only tiny subset of atrocity cases based on a series of contingent, chance-based factors, such as foreign perpetrators having their names flagged in an administrative process<\/a>, as happened with Lumbala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research on universal jurisdiction prosecutions suggests that there is bias in those prosecutions<\/a>, where low level perpetrators are significantly more likely than high level perpetrators to be brought to justice. This represents another aspect of universal jurisdiction as a challenge to rule of law principles, since law\u2019s legitimacy depends on its application regardless of social position. The Lumbala case can also be seen in this light. On the one hand, Lumbala is a former leader, and therefore an outlier in data showing that universal jurisdiction cases skew towards low-level perpetrators. On the other hand, Lumbala found himself before a French court after falling out with leadership in DRC, having become so politically weak and threatened that he was seeking asylum protection in France. The International Criminal Court has been critiqued in this same vein<\/a>, as \u201ca court that only tries rebels.\u201d Principled rule of law applications also suffers when defendants must be weak before the law can touch them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, universal jurisdiction removes atrocity crimes from the communities, circumstances and contexts in which they occurred, challenging their communicative potential. When quitting the trial, Lumbala told the court:\u201cThis is reminiscent of past centuries. The jury is French; the prosecutor is French. This court does not even know geographically where DRC is!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to information France provided the UN<\/a> Secretary-General, Lumbala\u2019s conviction is the ninth conviction obtained under universal jurisdiction since France changed its law to allow it. According to this same report, several other investigations leading to possible trials are ongoing. A central question remains unanswered: what message will these trials send, and to whom?<\/p>\n\n\n

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Recommended reading<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t
\"Roger<\/div><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\tFilling the void in the Lumbala trial\r\n\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n
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\"KerstinKERSTIN CARLSON<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kerstin Carlson is an Associate Professor at Roskilde University (Denmark), where her work focuses on the development of international law and legal institutions in the practice of transitional justice. She also teaches at The American University of Paris, where she is co-director of the Justice Lab. She is the author of The Justice Laboratory: International Law in Africa<\/em> (Chatham House\/Brookings Institute, 2022) and Model(ing) Justice: Perfecting the Promise of International Criminal Law<\/em> (Cambridge University Press 2018).<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The trial of Lumbala before a Paris court ended last year with a heavy conviction. It raises issues relating to universal jurisdiction trials in an even more acute manner, given that the defendant refused to attend his trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":154427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[567,2801],"tags":[4230],"ji_location":[2197,2231],"class_list":["post-154432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-universal-jurisdiction","tag-roger-lumbala-en","ji_location-democratic-republic-of-congo","ji_location-france"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUniversal Jurisdiction as Justice: the Lumbala trial in question<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The trial of Lumbala before a Paris court ended last year with a heavy conviction. 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It raises issues relating to universal jurisdiction trials in an even more acute manner, given that the defendant refused to attend his trial.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/154432-universal-jurisdiction-as-justice-the-lumbala-trial-in-question.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/154432-universal-jurisdiction-as-justice-the-lumbala-trial-in-question.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/154432-universal-jurisdiction-as-justice-the-lumbala-trial-in-question.html#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/RDCongo_Roger-Lumbala-silhouette_@Justice-Info.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/RDCongo_Roger-Lumbala-silhouette_@Justice-Info.jpg","width":1200,"height":800,"caption":"During the trial of Congolese national Roger Lumbala, the defence bench remained empty, with neither the defendant nor his lawyers present. When quitting the trial at its opening, Lumbala told the court: \u201cThis is reminiscent of past centuries. The jury is French; the prosecutor is French. This court does not even know geographically where DRC is!\u201d"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/154432-universal-jurisdiction-as-justice-the-lumbala-trial-in-question.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Universal Jurisdiction as Justice: the Lumbala trial in question"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/","name":"JusticeInfo.net","description":"For justice to be done, it must be seen","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#organization","name":"Justice Info","url":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/justiceinfo_logo-trans_1200x1200px.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/justiceinfo_logo-trans_1200x1200px.png","width":1199,"height":1200,"caption":"Justice Info"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/JusticeInfo\/","https:\/\/x.com\/justiceinfonet","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/justice-info","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCyCEsARodyuWtkWyhn-e7pA"]},{"@type":"Person","name":"Kerstin Bree Carlson","url":"\/en\/?s=Kerstin Bree Carlson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154432"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154438,"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154432\/revisions\/154438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154432"},{"taxonomy":"ji_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ji_location?post=154432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}