As plans for Liberia’s war and economic crimes court and national anti-corruption court get underway, we’re running a series of special interviews with Liberian and international experts and stakeholders about how the courts will work.
In this interview, Anthony Stephens speaks with Fatou Bom Bensouda, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, on the sidelines of the African Investigative Journalism Conference in Johannesburg this month. A Gambian and the only woman to date to hold the role, Bensouda led the Court’s prosecutorial team from 2012-2021.
Some notable prosecutions took place under her watch included former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo; Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta; and William Ruto, now Kenya’s sitting president, who at the time had just been elected deputy to Kenyatta. Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former vice president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was also prosecuted under her watch.
Support for this podcast came from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the European Union. (Until September 2026, the program was supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and American Jewish World Service.)
