10 06 14 ICC: Congolese Warlord to Go to Trial
(The Hague, June
9, 2014) – The International
Criminal Court’s confirmation of 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against
humanity charges against the warlord Bosco Ntaganda should pave the way for
broader justice in war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights
Watch said today.
On June 9, 2014, three pre-trial judges
unanimously found substantial grounds to believe that Ntaganda committed war
crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and attempted murder,
attacks against the civilian population, rape and sexual slavery, pillaging, and
persecution in northeastern Congo’s Ituri district in 2002 and 2003. The ruling
of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was based on evidence presented by the
Office of the Prosecutor at a February hearing.
“The ICC decision
sending Ntaganda to trial opens the door to justice for victims of horrific
crimes in Ituri,” said Géraldine
Mattioli-Zeltner, international justice advocacy director at Human Rights
Watch. “Ntaganda’s upcoming trial will send a powerful message to those
responsible for grave crimes in Congo that justice will eventually catch up with
them.”
Ntaganda was implicated in serious abuses against
civilians for over a decade, as he moved from one rebel group to another in
eastern Congo. The abuses continued while he served as a Congolese army general
between 2009 and 2012. In April 2012 Ntaganda mutinied from the army and helped
to launch a new rebel group, the M23. Following infighting in the ranks of the
M23 and a loss of support from his backers in neighboring Rwanda, Ntaganda
surrendered voluntarily at the US embassy in Kigali, Rwanda in March 2013, and
asked to be transferred to the ICC.
The full decision on the
confirmation of charges can be appealed with pre-trial chamber
authorization.
ICC judges will announce the start date of the
trial in due course.
One other Congo case is pending before the
ICC, of Sylvestre Mudacumura, the military commander of the Democratic Forces
for the Liberation of Rwanda (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du
Rwanda, FDLR), a largely Rwandan Hutu armed group, some of whose members
participated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The FDLR has been responsible for
numerous abuses in eastern Congo, including ethnic massacres, rapes, and forced
recruitment of children. Mudacumura is still at large in Congo and should
immediately be arrested and transferred to the ICC, Human Rights Watch
said.
Research by Human Rights Watch and other organizations has
found that senior political and military officials in Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda
provided important financial, military, and political support to abusive
militias in Ituri and the Kivu provinces, fully aware that these militias were
engaged in widespread violations of international law. To make a significant
contribution to justice in Congo, the ICC prosecutor should go beyond rebel
commanders and investigate the role of these high-level officials and officers
in serious abuses by national armed forces and armed groups active in Congo,
Human Rights Watch said.
The ICC prosecutor, who is conducting
investigations in seven other country situations around the world, needs strong
support from ICC member countries to obtain the necessary funding and
cooperation to undertake further investigations in Congo.
Congolese officials should support the work of the ICC through
national efforts to fight impunity for
the most serious crimes. Those efforts should include moving forward with the
government’s proposal to establish specialized mixed chambers to handle these
cases within the Congolese judicial system, provided they are independent and
effective.
“Justice will
not be complete if those who backed and armed Congo’s abusive militias are left
untouched,” Mattioli-Zeltner said. “Ntaganda’s trial should motivate the ICC
prosecutor to take her investigation in Congo to the next level and go after the
senior officials ultimately responsible for the region’s atrocities.”
For more background information, please see below.
For a
video feature on Bosco Ntaganda, please visit:
http://mm.hrw.org/content/bosco-ntaganda-wanted-war-crimes
For more
Human Rights Watch reporting on Ntaganda, please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/04/13/dr-congo-arrest-bosco-ntaganda-icc-trial
For more
Human Rights Watch reporting on grave human rights abuses during the Ituri
conflict, please visit:
- http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/07/07/covered-blood-0
- http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/06/01/curse-gold
For more Human
Rights Watch reporting on the ICC trial of Ntaganda’s co-accused, Lubanga,
please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/topic/international-justice/lubanga-trial
For more
information, please contact:
In Stuttgart,
Géraldine Mattioli-Zeltner (French, English): +49-151-4650-8928 (mobile); or mattiog@hrw.org.
Follow on Twitter @gemattioli
In Kinshasa, Ida Sawyer (English,
French): +243-81-33-78-478 (mobile); or sawyeri@hrw.org. Follow on Twitter
@ida_sawyer
In New York, Param-Preet Singh (English): +1-917-586-1140
(mobile); or singhp@hrw.org. Follow on Twitter
@singhp_p
In London, Anneke van Woudenberg (English, French):
+44-77-11-66-4960 (mobile); or woudena@hrw.org. Follow on Twitter @woudena
Background
The Congo investigation at the ICC was opened in
2004 after the prosecutor received a referral from President Joseph Kabila.
Congo has been an ICC member country since 2002. The Office of the Prosecutor
initially focused its investigations in the Ituri district in northeastern
Congo. The ICC issued arrest warrants against four rebel leaders in relation to
crimes there: Ntaganda and Thomas Lubanga of the Union of Congolese Patriots
(Union des Patriotes Congolais, UPC) and two leaders of the opposing
armed groups, Mathieu Ngudjolo of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front
(Front des nationalistes et intégrationnistes, FNI) and Germain Katanga
of the Patriotic Resistance Front in Ituri (Front de Résistance Patriotique
en Ituri, FRPI).
Lubanga was convicted in March 2012 and
sentenced to 14 years in prison for recruiting and using child soldiers during
the Ituri conflict in 2002 and 2003. Ngudjolo was acquitted in December 2012,
and Katanga was convicted in March 2014 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for
complicity in murders and an attack on civilians in the village of Bogoro,
Ituri, in February 2003. All three judgments are under appeal.
In
2008, the ICC prosecutor opened investigations in North and South Kivu provinces
of eastern Congo, which led to arrest warrants against two FDLR leaders. ICC
judges declined to confirm the charges against one of them, the FDLR executive
secretary, Callixte Mbarushimana, who was released in December 2010 from ICC
custody. Mudacumura, who is still at large, is the other.
The ICC
first issued an arrest warrant against Ntaganda in 2006, for the war crimes of
recruiting and using child soldiers during the war in Ituri in 2002 and 2003. In
July 2012, the ICC issued a second arrest warrant against Ntaganda, broadening
the scope of charges to include other grave crimes during the same conflict. The
expanded set of charges confirmed against Ntaganda is more representative of the
range of grave crimes committed by the UPC in Ituri. It will mean that a broad
number of the victims of UPC attacks – in addition to child soldiers – will
finally have access to justice through Ntaganda’s trial, Human Rights Watch
said.
From 2002 to 2005, Ntaganda had served as chief of military
operations of the UPC. During that period, forces under Ntaganda’s command were
implicated in many serious human rights abuses, including ethnic massacres,
torture, rape, and recruitment of child soldiers.
After leaving
the UPC in 2006, Ntaganda moved on to North Kivu province, where Human Rights
Watch documented
his continued involvement in grave abuses against civilians. He first joined a
rebel group, the National Congress
for the Defense of the People (Congrès National pour la Défense du
Peuple, CNDP), but was made a general in the
Congolese army in 2009 as a result of a peace agreement between the
government and the CNDP and despite the pending ICC arrest warrant against
him.
In April 2012, together with his supporters who had also been
reintegrated into the army, he mutinied and helped create the M23, a new rebel
movement. Human Rights Watch documented grave human
rights violations by M23 fighters, including summary
executions, rape, and forced recruitment of child soldiers. Like the UPC and
the CNDP before, the M23 had support
from Rwandan military officers.
None of the grave crimes
committed in North Kivu by troops under Ntaganda’s control are included in the
case against Ntaganda at the ICC. Victims of these crimes have expressed great
disappointment that the ICC case against Ntaganda will not permit them the
opportunity to have their suffering addressed. They have urged the ICC
prosecutor to add additional charges to Ntaganda’s dossier to cover these
crimes, but the prosecutor’s office said it does not have the necessary time and
resources to do it at this time.
Ntaganda is the first accused to
surrender voluntarily to the ICC. On March 18, 2013, he turned himself in at the
United States embassy in Kigali, Rwanda and asked to be transferred to The
Hague. Infighting between two factions of the M23 and the loss of support from
his Rwandan backers may have led him to fear for his
life.
Ida Sawyer
Senior
Researcher
Human Rights Watch
+243 81 33 78 478 | +243 99 86 75
565
Twitter: @ida_sawyer