AFP - The war crimes trial of former Democratic Republic of Congo vice president and ex-rebel Jean-Pierre Bemba will start on April 27, the International Criminal Court said Thursday.

"The International Criminal Court set the date for the commencement of the trial ... as Tuesday April 27, 2010," said a court statement.

Bemba, 47, stands accused of three charges of war crimes and two of crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the Central African Republic (CAR) from October 2002 to March 2003.

He will stand trial for acts of murder, rape and pillaging allegedly committed by members of his Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) while helping troops of then CAR president Ange-Felix Patasse fight off a coup bid.

His trial will be the ICC's third since it started operating in The Hague in July 2002.

The court in August granted Bemba conditional release ahead of his trial, but he remains in custody in The Hague until a country can be found to host him. Prosecutors appealed the decision on the grounds that Bemba was a flight risk and may harm witnesses in his trial.

Hearings scheduled to be held in September to examine the willingness of six states, cited as possible hosts by Bemba, were indefinitely postponed.

Most of the countries listed by Bemba -- Belgium, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy and South Africa -- had raised objections to hosting him.

A business tycoon who left DR Congo in 2007 after losing presidential elections held during a political transition in the wake of a 1998-2003 civil war, Bemba was arrested on an ICC warrant in Brussels in May 2008.

He had briefly led the opposition, but was forced into exile when government forces tried to disarm his private militia in clashes that killed 300 in March 2007.

Prosecutors claim Bemba had sent 1,000 to 1,500 troops to the CAR, partly to retain control of the border area with the Congolese province of Equateur.

While there, the prosecution alleges that MLC militia brutally gang-raped men, women and children, and tortured and murdered civilians.

Prosecutors had sought to try him on five counts of war crimes and three of crimes against humanity. But in June, judges ruled there was not sufficient evidence for charges of torture or outrages upon personal dignity, confirming a total of five counts.