The first ever trial of the International Criminal Court (ICC) started yesterday with Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga accused of war crimes for using child soldiers.
The case finally went to trial more than six years after the court started work and six months later than planned after a fierce debate about confidential evidence derailed the case last year.
Lubanga, 48, is expected to plead not guilty to using children under the age of 15 as soldiers in the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots political party in 2002 and 2003.
Lubanga claims he was a patriot fighting to prevent rebels and foreign fighters from plundering the vast mineral wealth of The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DR Congo) eastern Ituri region.
The UN estimates that up to 250,000 child soldiers are still fighting in more than a dozen countries around the world and activists say Lubanga’s trial will send a vital message to the armies in the DR Congo and elsewhere that recruit them.
“This first ICC trial makes it clear that the use of children in armed combat is a war crime that can and will be prosecuted at the international level,” said Param-Preet Singh, counsel in Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program.
Lubanga was arrested by Congolese authorities in 2005 and flown to The Hague a year later. He is one of only four suspects in the court’s custody — all of them Congolese.
Originally slated to begin last June, the trial was held up for six months amid a dispute between judges and prosecutors over confidential evidence.
The hearings before a three-judge panel will be the first international trial to feature the participation of victims. A total of 93 victims of the Ituri violence will be represented by eight lawyers and can apply for reparations.
Warlords use everything from drugs to sorcery to turn them into ruthless killers, snatching away their childhood innocence, said Bukeni Tete Waruzi, an activist who has helped demobilize hundreds of children from brutal militias in the east of the DR Congo.
As a way of proving their worthiness to fight, some are ordered to murder their own relatives. Girls also are sent to fight or turned into sex slaves.
“I have met one boy who was 12 years old, a colonel,” Waruzi said. “He had been able to kill his uncle when others were fearing to do so.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including