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Militiamen to face war crimes charges


HAGUE--The International Criminal Court ruled on Friday that there were
sufficient grounds to try two militiamen accused of seeking to wipe out
an entire village in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003.

A panel of judges "decided to commit Germain Katanga and Mathieu
Ngudjolo Chui for trial," for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a
court statement said.

Among other charges, they will stand accused of using children under 15
as bodyguards and combatants, killing civilians, and for sexual slavery
and rape committed in hostilities in the DR Congo’s northeastern Ituri
region.

"With calculated precision, over 1000 soldiers under the command of
Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui entered the village with one
communicated and agreed goal: to erase the village of Bogoro," deputy
prosecutor Fatou Bensouda argued before the court in June.

Friday’s ruling completed an extended confirmation of charges process,
which requires a pre-trial chamber to validate the prosecution’s
indictment.

There was sufficient evidence, the court found, that Katanga (30) and
Ngudjolo (37) committed murder "as part of a widespread and systematic
attack against the civilian population in the Ituri region."

No trial has yet started before the court, which started operating as
the the world’ first permanent and independent war crimes tribunal in
2002.

Its first trial, that of another Congolese militiaman Thomas Lubanga,
was to have started in July but was stalled when the court ruled that
prosecutors had wrongly withheld evidence from his lawyers.

The prosecution accuses Katanga and Ngudjolo of planning and ordering
the destruction of Bogoro village in the Ituri district on February 24,
2003.

It says more than 200 children, women, elderly and civilian men were
killed in the attack, during which women were sexually enslaved in camps
and repeatedly raped.

On Friday, the court held there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the
men for planning the attack against civilians, resulting in killings,
destruction of property and pillaging.

There was also sufficient evidence of sexual slavery and rape during and
after the attack, and of the use of children as bodyguards and
combatants.

The accused, both of the Lendu ethnic group, were the chiefs of two
militia groups that ravaged the Ituri region in confrontations with
ethnic Hema groups.

Until the attack, the village of Bogoro had been controlled by the
Forces Patriotiques pour la Liberation du Congo — a rival to Katanga’s
Force de Resistance Patriotique en Ituri and Ngudjolo’ Front des
Nationalistes et Integrationnistes.

It was considered strategic as it blocked FRPI and FNI fighters and
camps from the road leading to the key city of Bunia, over which a
long-running war was fought in mineral-rich Ituri.

Non-governmental bodies claim that inter-ethnic and militia violence in
Ituri was really about control over the area’s gold mines — claiming 60
000 lives since 1999.

The trial may not start for many months yet. Both men are in the custody
of the ICC, Katanga since October last year and Ngudjolo since February
this year.