A Congolese militia leader made his first appearance on Monday before the International Criminal Court, arguing he already had been acquitted of charges linked to the 2003 destruction of a village and the deaths of 200 villagers.
Mathieu Ngudjolo was arrested last week in Kinshasa and turned over to the Hague-based court. The 37-year-old is the third Congolese suspect taken into custody by the world's first permanent war crimes court.
Ngudjolo allegedly led forces of the National Integrationist Front -- including child soldiers -- who attacked the village of Bogoro in the eastern Ituri region of Congo in 2003, the court said.
PHOTO: AP
The rebel fighters murdered 200 people, captured women and girls as sex slaves and locked prisoners in a room full of corpses, prosecutors allege. Ngudjolo faces three charges of crimes against humanity and six of war crimes.
Belgian defense attorney Jean-Pierre Kilenda told the judges the case was inadmissible because Ngudjolo had been tried for the same offenses by a Congolese court and acquitted in June 2004.
"He cannot be tried twice for the same crimes," Kilenda said. "There is nothing left for you but to acknowledge the fact that this case is inadmissible."
Kilenda also said that, should the court decide to continue with the case, it should release Ngudjolo pending his trial, for which no date has been set.
Prosecutors said they would respond to the court in writing, and judges did not comment on Kilenda's claims.
"Obviously, we will be opposing both applications -- admissibility as well as provisional release," deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said.
Ngudjolo is the second suspect arrested in connection with the Bogoro attack. Last year, Congolese authorities handed over Germain Katanga, known as Simba, who is accused of leading the Patriotic Resistance force when it attacked Bogoro.
He has not yet entered a plea.
At a closed-door hearing that was scheduled to take place after press time yesterday, prosecutors were to seek to have the two suspects tried together.
Back-to-back wars in Congo from 1998 to 2002 drew in armies from half a dozen neighboring countries.
Sporadic fighting continues in the country's eastern border region, which is divided into zones controlled by rival factions.
At the time of his arrest, Ngudjolo was a colonel in the Congolese national army. Congolese President Joseph Kabila entered a power sharing deal with militia leaders to end the country's civil war and co-opted some of them into the national army.
Asked by the three-judge panel about his conditions of detention, Ngudjolo said he had no complaints, apart from the quality of the Dutch cooking he is served at the court's detention center.
"It doesn't agree with me," Ngudjolo said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS