Actress Sienna Miller not satisfied--Even after phone hack apology

Sienna Miller will sue again The News of the World

The News of the World offers compensation for phone hacking, but Sienna Mill is not satisfied and will sue the paper anyhow.

LONDON — The paper News of the world has offered compensation to Actress Sienna Miller of any justifiable claims and acknowledged eavesdropping the voicemails of public figures. But it has done little effect to stop the scandal which has endangered the goodwill of Britain’s political establishment and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Many celebrities are suing the paper but the lawyer Mark Thomson of Sienna Miller said that Sienna has not dropped her lawsuit against the paper which she accuses of “outrageous violations of privacy” and is awaiting for more information before taking any further action. The actress further accuses that the stated paper is continuously accessing her phone for the last one year and gathering information about her, her family and her former partner Jude Law.

On the other hand News of the world has been accusing their two scoundrel employees for years and who were also jailed in 2007 for eavesdropping and hacking of voicemails crime of royal staff, which includes Prince William and Prince Harry. News of the world has further regret genuinely their past behavior for incepting voicemails. However, Murdoch, the owner of the paper could not stop the critics. John Prescott, the former Deputy Prime Minister, added that until the hacking of voicemails issue is not resolved the government should stop the Newspaper taking full control of satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC.

On the other hand the government has approved plans by Murdoch's News Corp.  that if it spin off its Sky News channel as an independent company they are offered to buy the 61 percent of BSkyB it does not already own.

Police found about 3,000 phone numbers after their initial inquiry of phone hacking
Critics of the Newspaper say that there are thousands of people who were victimized by the Newspaper’s rogue reporters but currently paper is facing around 20 lawsuits.

Police has arrested and questioned newspaper’s chief reporter, its former head of news, and forced Andy Coulson, former News of the World editor hired as Prime Minster David Cameron’s communication chief, but not arrested to step down from his job

Four British National Newspapers: The Sun, the News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times are owned by Murdoch’s News International Ltd. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and the Fox Television are their U.S. media outlets, whereas News International is a subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Aage Se Right

Abuse and show trials – Amnesty reports on Iran

Convicted men publicly hanged in Mashhad, north-west Iran, in 2007. The situation today is no better than 20 years ago, says Amnesty. Photograph: Halabisaz/AP

Human rights group criticises increase in political repression in six months since reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Human rights abuses in Iran are now as bad as at any time in the past 20 years, Amnesty International reports tomorrow in a survey marking six months since June's disputed presidential election.

Amnesty documents "patterns of abuse" by the Basij militia and revolutionary guards involving beatings, rape, death threats, forced confessions, intimidation and official cover-ups. Many detainees have been subjected to show trials and five have been sentenced to death.

"The authorities have resorted to exceptionally high levels of violence and arbitrary measures to stifle protest and dissent," says the 80-page report. "The courts have not been an instrument of justice to hold police, security forces and other state officials to account … or to protect the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, association and religion."

According to official figures, 36 people died in violence after the election, but the opposition puts the figure at more than 70. At least 4,000 people were arrested after the poll on 12 June and some 200 remain in jail. This week, 200 people were arrested during protests around university campuses on national students day.

Protests began when the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed victory over the leading opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, amid claims that the result had been rigged.

Amnesty quotes an unnamed former detainee who was held with 75 others for more than eight weeks in a container at the notorious Kahrizak detention centre in Tehran. He was told his son would be raped if he did not "confess" and was beaten unconscious with a baton .

Last month, Ramin Pourandarjani, a young doctor who had treated inmates at Kahrizak and had reportedly been forced to certify the death of at least one torture victim as resulting from meningitis, died in suspicious circumstances.

Ebrahim Mehtari, a 26-year-old student, described being held in a tiny cell, interrogated while blindfolded and accused of "working with Facebook networks" and tortured into making a confession. He said: "They frequently beat me on the face; I was burned with cigarettes under my eyes, on the neck, head. I was beaten all over … They threatened to execute me and they humiliated me."

An independent medical examination substantiated his claims. But all the relevant documents disappeared, the authorities refused to investigate and his family were warned not to talk about the case.

Amnesty says Iran refused to co-operate with its investigation and has denied the organisation entry into the country since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Many of the cases have been documented previously, but the cumulative effect of the data underlines what Amnesty calls "a clear pattern of systematic gross human rights violations by Iranian security forces condoned or even encouraged by powerful political and religious figures in Iran."

The report says government officials "have done their utmost to ensure that accounts of rape are discredited and not circulated further".

Amnesty has harsh words for the show trials of leading opposition figures. "The trials, broadcast to the nation, featured coerced 'confessions', 'apologies' and incrimination of others. Rather than bringing people to justice, the purpose was to validate the authorities' account of the post-election unrest and to make clear the severe consequences of opposing the authorities."

Abbas seeks vote on Gaza report

Mr Abbas gave a televised speech to explain the Goldstone decision

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has called for a session of the UN Human Rights Council to vote on a report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza.
Mr Abbas has faced a week of angry criticism after the Palestinian Authority backed deferring the vote until March.
On Sunday he said there had not been enough support for the vote.
Hamas's leader in Damascus called the issue a "scandal" that would harm Palestinian unity efforts.
Mr Abbas was speaking in a televised address, widely seen as an attempt to restore his standing in the wake of the withdrawal of Palestinian backing for the report by UN investigator Richard Goldstone.
The report accuses both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during Israel's 22-day operation in Gaza which began in December 2008.

Goldstone fall-out plagues Abbas
UN condemns 'war crimes' in Gaza
"Since we felt that we would not be able to gather enough support, we asked for the postponement of the draft resolution until the upcoming session of the Human Rights Council," he said, by way of explanation.
Mr Abbas had already ordered an "investigation" into how his own government made the decision.
He said he had now instructed his officials to push for a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to bring forward the debate that the PA had earlier supported deferring until March.
'Mistakes'
The council could choose to refer the report to the UN Security Council, which has the power to ask the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes prosecution.
Khaled Meshaal, the Syria-based leader of Hamas, said the decision to back deferring the vote was "a scandal" and "the final straw", and Hamas could "not accept any more mistakes".
"This is not a leadership which deserves our trust," he said.
The group said it had delayed talks to end a bitter feud with Mr Abba's Fatah faction.
The rival movements had been due to sign a deal paving the way for fresh elections in the first half of 2010 in late October.
Egypt's foreign minister said on Sunday that the reconciliation might be postponed "for a few weeks".
No agreement on talks
Israel has dismissed the Goldstone report as flawed and intrinsically biased.
It reacted angrily on Sunday to comments by the UK's ambassador to the UN in support of elements of the report.
Israeli officials suggested that if the same legal arguments were applied to British conduct in Afghanistan and Iraq as in Gaza, the UK could find itself in the dock.
"London is waging its own war against terror, and they might find themselves with their hands tied if they back Goldstone's recommendations," the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted unnamed officials as saying.
Also on Sunday, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell ended a visit to the region without getting a commitment from Israeli and the Palestinian officials on the resumption of stalled peace negotiations.
Israel's right-wing government has refused to meet the Palestinian demand that it comply with previous pledges to freeze all settlement activity before talks can resume.
According to comments reported in the Palestinian press, Mr Meshaal apparently also reversed previous statements suggesting Hamas would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
"After the Arabs offered all the possible initiatives and after the Israelis and the Americans rejected their initiatives, the Arabs and the Palestinians must go back to their original demands," he said.
"We must say: Palestine from the sea to the river, from the west to the occupied east, and it must be liberated," he said, referring to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and therefore the state of Israel.

Transparency’s corruption report anti-Pakistan: Fouzia

Central Secretary Information, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Fouzia Wahab. — Photo by APP

KARACHI: Central Secretary Information, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Fouzia Wahab on Thursday strongly criticising a recent report of Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) about corruption in Pakistan has said the report is against our national interests.
Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club, Fouzia Wahab said the objective of the TIP's report about corruption in Pakistan is to influence the public opinion.

She said the issuance of Transparency's report at such a time, when the meetings of Friends of Pakistan (FOP) are underway, is not only against the government, but it is also against the country and our national interests.

Rejecting the TIP report's alleged findings with regard to lack of accountability laws in the country, Fouzia Wahab noted that Pakistan is a functional state, where the departments are intact and the anti-corruption departments and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) are also working.

She said we welcome the criticism but the people have given us their votes and we have to protect their rights.

The PPP leader raised a question as to why such a report had not been published in the past and its issuance at the time of the meetings of Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) is animosity with the country.

She also raised questions about the credibility as well as the aims of the patrons and financers of Transparency International.

She said the TIP's report about corruption in Pakistan is published simultaneously from New York and Islamabad with intentions against the country.

Yemen tries Somalis over piracy

The suspects were detained by Indian and Russian forces

More than 20 suspected Somali pirates have appeared in court in Yemen after being detained in the Gulf of Aden by international naval forces.

Indian forces detained 12 of them in December after they allegedly hijacked a Yemeni fishing boat.

Ten others, detained in February and transferred to Yemen by Russian forces, face charges of attempting to hijack an unidentified foreign vessel.

All pleaded not guilty and the trials have been adjourned until October.

International naval forces stepped up patrols in the Gulf of Aden this year in an attempt to curb Somali piracy, but relatively few of the pirates detained have faced trial because of the legal complexities involved.

Prosecutors appeal al-Bashir genocide decision

FILE- In this Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009 file photo, Sudanese President Omar al Bashir speaks during a visit to the Maygoma House for orphaned and unaccompanied children in Khartoum, Sudan. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have appealed the tribunal's decision not to indict Sudan's president on charges of waging genocide in Darfur, according to a document released Tuesday, July 7, 2009. The court charged Omar al-Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity in March for allegedly orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape and forced expulsions in Darfur province. But judges said there was insufficient evidence to merit charging him with genocide. (AP Photo/Abd Raouf, File) (Abd Raouf - AP)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have appealed the tribunal's decision not to indict Sudan's president on charges of waging genocide in Darfur, according to a document released Tuesday.

The court charged Omar al-Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity in March for allegedly orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape and forced expulsions in Darfur province. But judges said there was insufficient evidence to merit charging him with genocide.

Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state indicted by the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal since it was established in 2002.

But Sudan's president defiantly refuses to recognize the court's jurisdiction, and African Union leaders said Friday they would not arrest and extradite him.

Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo rejected the stance Tuesday after meeting with AU officials in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa for talks on Darfur.

"The AU is not a signatory of the charter," said Moreno Ocampo. "Individual nations are."

He said 30 African nations have signed the court's founding document, which obliges them to cooperate with the court.

"African leaders may make political statements but individual nations' laws take precedence," Moreno Ocampo said.

Since the court indicted al-Bashir and issued an international arrest warrant against him, he has traveled outside Sudan several times without being arrested. The international court has no police force and relies on countries to execute the arrest warrants.

The appeal filed Monday and released Tuesday said the judges who rejected the three genocide charges were wrong in applying "an evidentiary burden that is inappropriate for this procedural stage."

Prosecutors argued that they need only prove there are "reasonable grounds to believe" al-Bashir was responsible for genocide when asking for judges to file charges.

Instead, prosecutors said, the judges applied a too-high standard of proof called 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'

Moreno Ocampo insisted Tuesday that if al-Bashir wants to put the charges behind him he must beat them in The Hague.

"The only option is for al-Bashir to go to court and get an acquittal," Moreno Ocampo. "I have three years until I leave and after I leave, my successor will be there for nine years. This will continue."

His appeal accuses al-Bashir of mobilizing the entire Sudanese state apparatus with the aim of destroying a substantial part of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in Darfur over more than six years.

Fighting in Darfur since 2003 has left up to 300,000 people dead and driven another 2.7 million from their homes, the United Nations says.

----

Appeal on Bashir genocide charges

Omar al-Bashir says the charges reflect Western hostility towards Sudan

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have appealed against the judges' decision not to indict Sudan's president for genocide.

The judges in March said there was insufficient evidence to support the three charges of genocide in Darfur.

However they issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ICC chief prosecutor is in Ethiopia for talks with the African Union, which says Mr Bashir should not be charged.

At the AU summit last week, African leaders said their request to the UN Security Council to delay Mr Bashir's indictment had been ignored, so they would not help arrest Sudan's leader.

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who is pushing for the genocide charges, is on the first leg of a trip to Africa that will also take him to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

In his appeal lodged on Monday, it said the prosecution had "submitted detailed evidence on the mobilisation and use of the entire Sudanese state apparatus for the purpose of destroying a substantial part of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in the entire region of Darfur during more than six years".

Mr Bashir has denied all the prosecution's allegations, saying the state has a responsibility to fight rebels who took up arms in Darfur in 2003.

The UN says 300,000 people have died and more than two million fled their homes in that time.

The war crimes court, based in The Hague, has already issued two arrest warrants - in 2007 - for Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ahmed Haroun and the Janjaweed militia leader Ali Abdul Rahman.

Sudan has refused to hand them over.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo has also requested warrants for three Darfur rebel commanders.

China accuses pro-democracy activist Liu Xiabo of inciting a rebellion

Mr Liu has been held in a secret prison somewhere in Beijing since last December

Liu Xiaobo, one of China's most famous pro-democracy advocates, has been charged with trying to subvert Communist Party rule.

After being held for seven months in a secret jail, Mr Liu, 53, was formally arrested for "alleged agitation activities aimed at subversion of government and overthrowing of the socialist system", according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
It added that Mr Liu had been "spreading rumours and defaming the government" and that he had "confessed to the charge in preliminary police investigation".

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The crime of inciting a subversion can carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, according to Mr Liu's lawyer, Mo Shaoping.
Mr Liu has been held in a secret prison somewhere in Beijing since last December. In one of two meetings with his wife since the beginning of the year, he told her he was being held in a small room with no windows.
He was arrested one day before releasing Charter 08, a petition calling for the end of one-party rule in China and the establishment of a multi-party democracy.
Charter 08 was initially signed by 300 lawyers, intellectuals and dissidents. It won widespread praise overseas, and has unsettled the Communist Party at home. As many as 8,000 people have come forward to sign it, despite the risks of publicly supporting such a document.
Liu's wife, Liu Xia, is under constant surveillance and the police have built a guardhouse outside her Beijing apartment.
The charges bring Mr Liu one step closer to trial and his lawyer said it was a "breakthrough" that Mr Liu's period of silent confinement was at an end.
"It is too early to say what sort of defence we will adopt at trial," he said. "The act of subversion involves writing articles or giving interviews and speaking freely. Liu has confessed to this in the past."
He added that the authorities had already broken the law by holding Mr Liu for seven months in a secret jail, saying that he should have been allowed to remain under house arrest. "The way he has been held so far is a complete breach of the law."
Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the United States Congress, said she had directly petitioned Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, for Mr Liu's release.
Mr Liu spent two years in prison after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and three years in a labour camp from 1996 for challenging single-party rule and advocating negotiations with the Dalai Lama over Tibet.

Sudan: 4 sentenced to die for US diplomat killing

In this undated file photo provided by Clark University, John Granville, left, is shown with

KHARTOUM, Sudan – A Sudanese court convicted five people Wednesday in the slaying of an American diplomat last year and sentenced four of them to death.
Gunmen firing from a car killed John Granville and his Sudanese driver on Jan. 1, 2008, as he was returning home from a New Year's party in Khartoum, Sudan's capital.
Granville, from Buffalo, New York, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development. The 33-year-old was working to implement a 2005 peace agreement between Sudan's north and south that ended more than two decades of civil war.
It was the first time an American had been killed in Sudan since 1973, when two diplomats were slain by Palestinian militants.
Four of the defendants were convicted of murder, possession of firearms and other charges and sentenced to death by hanging.
One of them is a former Sudanese army officer who was in active service at the time of Granville's slaying. He was dismissed after he was implicated in the case.
A fifth defendant was convicted of selling the weapons used in the attack and sentenced to two years in prison.
The five men say they were coerced to confess to the American's killing. Their lawyer said he would appeal Wednesday's ruling.
In the attack, a vehicle cut off Granville's car and its occupants opened fire before fleeing. His driver, Abdel-Rahman Abbas, was immediately killed. Granville, who was hit by five bullets, died of his wounds after surgery.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement Wednesday that the verdicts are an important step in bringing justice. She said the men were "dedicated to bringing peace and stability to Sudan, and we honor their memory."
The prosecutor in the case said during the trial that the assailants acted out of "religious zeal" and that the group was looking for a Western target during New Year's Eve celebrations.
He said the men attacked Granville after finding that potential targets among places they expected to be crowded or having celebrations were closed or empty.
The shooting came a day after former President George W. Bush signed legislation to allow states and local governments to cut investment ties with Sudan because of the fighting in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced.
The chief investigator in the case had testified that the assailants also planned to kill a British diplomat in the country in revenge for a British schoolteacher's decision to let her young students name a toy bear Muhammad, the same name as Islam's founder.
The British diplomat, however, escaped unharmed when he disappeared into a crowd, the police investigator said.
Granville's mother, Jane, said in a statement read out in court that her son's death was a loss for the family and for the people of Sudan.
"His dedication and commitment to supporting and advancing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement guided his efforts toward the dream of a just, stable and peaceful Sudan," the statement said.

Leading Chinese dissident charged with 'inciting subversion'

A woman walks past a painting of captured Israeli soldier Sgt. Gilad Schalit in Jerusalem, Wednesday, …

Beijing – China's best-known dissident was formally arrested on Wednesday, after more than six months in secret detention.
Liu Xiaobo, an internationally respected writer, was accused of "inciting subversion," the state news agency, Xinhua, reported. The charge carries a maximum 15-year jail term.
Mr. Liu's formal arrest fits a pattern of increasingly harsh measures by the authorities against independent voices, human rights groups say. Earlier this month, nearly 20 civil rights lawyers lost the right to practice when their licenses were not renewed.
"Tolerance of dissent is lower," says Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based China analyst with Human Rights Watch. "We are in the biggest cycle of political tightening we have seen for many years."
Never charged, until nowThough Liu has spent nearly six years in jail, spread over three spells, he has never before been formally charged with any crime.
The police have not said why Liu was detained last December, nor why he was charged Wednesday, but his detention appears linked to his role as one of the original signatories of Charter 08. That was a call for bold political reforms that would lead to democracy in China. It was published on the Internet the day after Liu's arrest.
'Inciting subversion'Ironically, one of the demands enshrined in the Charter was for the abolition of the crime of "inciting subversion," which has often been used to silence critics of the regime. For having called for an end to the crime of "inciting subversion," Liu was charged with that very offense.
News of Liu's arrest drew strong criticism from human rights organizations. "This use of state security charges to punish activists for merely expressing their views must stop," said Roseann Rife of Amnesty International in a statement. "This is another act of desperation by a regime that is terrified of public opinion."
When Liu, a literary critic and essayist, was taken from his home last December, leading authors from around the world, including Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, and Nadine Gordimer called for his release.
Liu's arraignment puts an end to more than six months of detention at an unknown location, in contravention of Chinese law. Police said he was being held under "residential surveillance," a form of house arrest, while he was under investigation, but he was not held at his own home.
He was denied all contact with the outside world, except for two meetings with his wife.
Though his formal arrest on specified charges brings Liu back into the realm of legal detention, and gives him a right to a lawyer, it will almost certainly lead to his imprisonment. Almost all the political cases that go before China's courts result in conviction.

UN concern over Sri Lanka camps

People are not being released from camps until they have been screened

Most of Sri Lanka's displaced people could still be kept in government-run camps in one year's time, a UN official has told the BBC quoting army sources.
But the government rejected the suggestion, saying that it aimed to resettle most by the end of this year.
About 250,000 people fled the final bloody phase of the civil war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.
Meanwhile, a human rights group accused the government of failing to probe rights abuses during the conflict.
It was in the final weeks of the war that hundreds of thousands of civilians streamed out of rapidly-diminishing rebel-held territory.
They were ultimately housed in government-run camps in the district of Vavuniya.
We need to look into this issue of how long are they going to be kept in these places, will they be given proper freedom of movement
Mark Cutts, UN official
The UN expressed concern about the permanent nature of the shelters being put up in these camps.
The official, Mark Cutts, said that nothing less than a new city had been created at Manik Farm, the massive complex of camps where he worked for the past month as a senior co-ordinator.
He said bulldozers were working constantly to clear jungle and that phone lines, schools, banks and even a cash machine had been built. He said this was "phenomenal" but described government plans to replace tents with more permanent structures as a "big worry".
"Senior military officials have also told us that they don't expect to see any significant returns in the next six months, On the contrary, some senior officials told us just yesterday that they expect probably not more than 20% of these people will have returned in the next year," Mr Cutts said.
But Sri Lanka's human rights minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said it was "absolutely false" to suggest that it would take so long. He said it was not the military but the government who took such decisions and that it aimed to resettle most people by the end of this year.
More from BBC World Service
In the past week, the government says about 2,000 displaced people have been resettled in their villages in the north-west. These people fled their homes about two-and-a-half years ago.
It says that the refugees living in the camps are being strictly vetted to ensure they have no links with the rebels. Only after that process can their return home be considered.
International standards
But the UN said that even those who have been through the screening process have not yet been released from the camps and that no one apart from those under 10 or over 60 years of age were being allowed out.
"We need to look into this issue of how long are they going to be kept in these places, will they be given proper freedom of movement - and that is going to be a big concern if these camps are going to be there for longer than the three to six months we initially assumed," Mr Cutts said.
He said that humanitarian access to the camps had improved in recent days, but this was not unconditional. While understanding the government's security concerns, he said the UN had to ensure international standards were met when dealing with the displaced.
Mr Samarasinghe confirmed that those being screened must wait for the process to be completed but said they needed somewhere to stay in the meantime.

In a separate development, human rights group Amnesty International accused the Sri Lankan government of never seriously investigating the human rights abuses allegedly committed during the 26-year civil war.
It has called on the government to take advantage of the end of the conflict to seriously investigate all these allegations.
It says the issue is even more pressing in the wake of the controversies that arose during the final weeks of the conflict, when international human rights groups accused both the Tamil Tiger rebels and the government of committing war crimes.
The government was accused of subjecting areas of rebel-held territory to indiscriminate shelling, while the rebels were accused of using civilians as human shields.
Sri Lanka has previously dismissed calls for an independent inquiry into claims of human rights abuses by the military, saying its own courts will investigate.

Congo's Bemba to stand ICC trial

Jean-Pierre Bemba's troops are accused of rape, murder and pillaging

Congolese ex-Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba will face five counts of war crimes, the International Criminal Court has ruled.
The charges relate to the actions of his troops in the neighbouring Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003.
Mr Bemba has denied all charges, saying the militia was not under his command once they had crossed the border.
He led a rebel movement during DR Congo's long civil war but became vice-president under a peace deal.
Mr Bemba is the most high-profile of four Congolese warlords facing trial at the ICC.
A pre-trial panel of judges "found that there is sufficient evidence to establish substantial grounds to believe that Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo is criminally responsible" for murders, rapes and pillaging, said a statement from the ICC.
He is to face trial on three counts of war crimes and two of crimes against humanity.
JEAN-PIERRE BEMBA
Son of famous businessman
Former assistant to Mobutu Sese Seko
1998: Helped by Uganda to former MLC rebel group
2003: Becomes vice-president under peace deal
2006: Loses run-off election to President Joseph Kabila but gets most votes in western DR Congo
2007: Flees after clashes in Kinshasa
Warlord trial gives victims hope
Profile: Jean-Pierre Bemba
Fighters from his Movement for the Liberation of Congo were accused of committing atrocities when they intervened in the conflict in CAR.
At a pre-trial hearing in January, the prosecutor said Mr Bemba "wanted to traumatise and terrorise the civilian population so they would not support the rebels".
"He chose rape as his main method... rapes against mothers in the presence of their children and rapes of children as their parents were forced to watch," the prosecutor said.
Mr Bemba, 46, was arrested in Belgium last May and extradited to The Hague in July.
One of his defence lawyers suggested that the charges may be politically motivated, to remove Mr Bemba from future elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He lost a landmark run-off election against President Joseph Kabila in 2006.
He fled the country after being charged with treason after his bodyguards clashed with the army in 2007.

More Sudan rebels face the noose

The unprecedented rebel attack is said to have left more than 220 dead

A Sudanese court has sentenced to death another 12 rebels from the Darfur region over an unprecedented attack on the capital, Khartoum, in May 2008.
They were found guilty of terrorism, murder and destroying public property.
The ruling raises to 103 the number of Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) fighters ordered hanged for the raid. None have been executed yet.
Sudan says more than 220 people died when Jem fighters drove across hundreds of miles of desert to attack Khartoum.
Mental institution
They were only fought off at a bridge a few kilometres from the presidential palace.
Special courts set up in the wake of the attack have been judging the alleged rebels in groups over the last few weeks.
One of the men sentenced to die on Tuesday in Khartoum is said to be the half-brother of Jem leader Khalil Ibrahim. A thirteenth man was reportedly sentenced to a mental institution.
A senior Jem official, Al-Tahir al-Feki, denounced the latest death sentences, telling AFP news agency they would only further hold back already troubled peace talks.