Word: bokassa
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JEAN-BEDEL BOKASSA...
...represent a triumph of hope over experience. Three of the visits recorded here were prompted by somber, decidedly unromantic events. Shoumatoff went to Rwanda shortly after naturalist Dian Fossey was hacked to death with a machete in her remote mountainside camp. The trial of former emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa -- on charges ranging from corruption to cannibalism -- drew him to the Central African Republic. And the spread of AIDS across the continent inspired a depressing pilgrimage through a belt of impoverished, afflicted countries...
When deposed Emperor Bokassa I returned to the Central African Republic from Europe last October after seven years in exile, he apparently expected to be hailed as a conquering hero. Instead, he was promptly tried on some of the same charges for which he had been convicted in absentia and sentenced to death in 1980: murder, embezzlement and other crimes committed during his heinous 14-year rule...
...after day, the country listened in amazement to the court proceedings on the radio. By the end, says a Western diplomat, the former emperor had been "demythologized" in the eyes of his countrymen. Last week a court again found him guilty and reimposed the death sentence. Bokassa has appealed the verdict...
...Bokassa denied any wrongdoing as the new trial got under way in the capital city of Bangui. "I am not a cannibal," he said. After shouting matches with the ex-Emperor, Prosecutor Gabriel Mbodou asked for more time to prepare arguments. Central African Judge Edouard Frank suspended the trial until...