Today in History- June 12: Legal loophole sees dictator avoid punishment for cannibalism
Former dictator of the Central African Republic Jean-Bedel Bokassa was found guilty of at least 20 counts of murder on June 12, 1987.
Bokassa was the first former leader in post-colonial Africa to face a legitimate trial, and faced myriad serious charges.
Bokassa was found guilty by trial of the massacre of as many as 100 schoolchildren at a prison in the capital of Bangui.
A group of students had thrown rocks at his Rolls Royce in 1979 in protest of mandatory new school uniforms made at a factory owned by his wife.
That night, Bokassa arrived at the prison where the students were being held and beat several of them to death with his cane.
He then presided over the murder of dozens more.
Students who had survived the massacre by pretending to be dead testified against him.
"I'm not a saint," Bokassa said in his defence.
"I'm a man like everyone else."
But Bokassa was cleared of the more lurid charge of cannibalism.
This photo shows the giant refrigerator where Bokassa reportedly kept his victims.
The court was told by a former chef that he was ordered to serve human flesh to Bokassa and to foreign dignitaries.
However, under Central African Republic law at the time, cannibalism was considered a misdemeanour crime.
And one of Bokassa's successors had declared a general amnesty on misdemeanours, allowing the dictator to avoid punishment.
But he was nevertheless sentenced to death for murder.
The sentence was reduced to life imprisonment a few years later. Eventually he was freed after just five years.
He died in 1996.
The film spent 13 weeks atop the box office charts and was the highest grossing film of 1963.
Despite that, its colossal budget meant it failed to break even.
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