A Congolese militia leader widely known as “the Terminator” ordered troops, including child soldiers, to massacre and rape civilians to spread terror and grab territory, prosecutors yesterday told the International Criminal Court.
The allegations against Bosco Ntaganda were made at the opening of hearings seen as a test for the global legal institution after a string of troubled cases.
Ntaganda has yet to enter a plea.
Photo: Reuters
“He played a key role in planning assaults against the civilian population in order to gain territory,” chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said, setting out her arguments to judges who will decide if there is enough evidence for Ntaganda to stand trial.
Ntaganda was a senior military commander who should also be punished because he “failed to prevent or punish crimes by troops under his effective command or control,” she said.
Ntaganda, an ethnic Hema, is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and rape, all allegedly committed during a 2002 to 2003 conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo).
The crimes were committed against the Lendu population and other ethnic groups in a bid to drive them out of the Ituri region over 12 months from September 2002, the prosecutor said.
Ntaganda, a tall, slight man with a pencil-line moustache, rose briefly at the start of the hearing, speaking in his native Kinyarwanda to confirm his identity.
Ntaganda handed himself in to the US embassy in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in March last year after a 15-year career as a commander in a series of rebellions in the DR Congo’s Ituri Province.
Shortly after his arrival in The Hague, prosecutors asked judges for more time to rebuild a case that had been dormant for five years while Ntaganda was on the run.
The session will be a test of Bensouda’s promise last year that cases will be “trial ready” by the time they come to court — an implicit response to criticisms by academics and member states of earlier cases which collapsed when judges ruled evidence was not strong enough.
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