Congolese militia leader and fugitive Bosco Ntaganda was confronted on Monday at the Hague, Netherlands by prosecutors over his alleged war crimes which is not limited to beheading civilians, raping women and recruiting children as fresh soldiers to his cause, said the Guardian. The International Criminal Court was told that Ntaganda gave orders to his soldiers to conduct the violent acts in the name of upholding his Hema ethnicity as more superior than ethnic Lendus in the northeastern part of Democratic Republic of the Congo over ten years ago.
At the hearing, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said of Ntaganda, "He played a key role in planning assaults against the civilian population in order to gain territory. He persecuted civilians on ethnic grounds, through deliberate attacks, forced displacement, murder, rape, sexual enslavement and pillaging. (He had) failed to prevent or punish crimes by troops under his effective command or control."
In 2006, the Guardian said Ntaganda was accused of murder and keeping women captives as his sex slaves. The allegations reportedly earned him comparisons with a more famous warlord, Ugandan Joseph Kony. The UK newspaper said that Ntaganda disrespect the ICC and the UN peacekeepers during his stint as a general in the Congolese army in 2009.
The lawyer representing victims of the alleged war crimes, Dmytro Surprun, added, "Victims were killed by bullets, by arrows, by nail-studded sticks. Most of them were mutilated, some were decapitated and their head borne as a trophy."
The warlord known as "the Terminator" denied all 18 charges lodged against him, said the Guardian, but is not required by the cour to submit a formal plea. Reuters also said that Ntaganda had retained his stance since his first appearance at the ICC in March last year.
Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner of Human Rights Watch commended the ICC's efforts to prosecute a known criminal when it was made known that Ntaganda will be tried. She said, "Ntaganda's appearance at the ICC after years as a fugitive offers victims of horrific crimes a real hope of seeing justice. Ntaganda's detention in The Hague shows that no one is above the law."
