ICC Prosecutors detail grim DRCongo war crimes accusations

War crimes prosecutors detailed Friday a grim case of mass murder and sexual enslavement against two Congolese militia leaders accused of seeking to wipe out an entire village in 2003. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui “deliberately planned, orchestrated and ordered their respective troops to execute their plan to attack, wipe out or erase the village of Bogoro,” deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, right, told the International Criminal Court in The Hague. (27-JUNE-08)

Based on an Agence France Presse article, released on the website of MONUC, UN´s operation in the DRC, this article has been edited and prepared for republication here by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz.Photo of Bensouda: Jan Daniels / AFP Getty. Photo of Nugidjolo Chui: AFP / BBC, Photo of Katanga: AFP.

“Over 200 children, women, elderly and civilian men were killed in the attack, during which women were sexually enslaved in camps and repeatedly raped.” Bensouda´s remarks came at the start of a three-week confirmation hearing of charges against the pair for ordering their respective militia forces to attack Bogoro, in the Democratic Republic of Congo´s northeastern Ituri district.

Bensouda told a panel of three judges that villagers awoke to gunfire on the morning of February 24, 2003. “With calculated precision, over 1,000 soldiers … under the command of Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, right, entered the village with one communicated and agreed goal: to erase the village of Bogoro.” Bensouda said the soldiers burnt several houses, sometimes with the inhabitants still inside. “Many civilians were killed, either by bullet or knife, or were captured, sexually enslaved or otherwise,” the deputy prosecutor said. “Civilians were detained in a room full of dead bodies. The next day, the militias forced those people to lure other civilians out of their hiding places in order for the militia to kill them.”

After the attack, Katanga, (left, captured last October, as he was escorted onto the plane to take him to the Hague) and Ngudjolo celebrated their victory with other militia leaders in the deserted village centre, with civilian bodies strewn around, Bensouda told the court. “Bogoro was razed to the ground,” added Eric MacDonald, for the prosecution. “Even today the population of Bogoro is half of what it used to be.” Katanga, 30, and Ngudjolo, 37, face 13 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, using child soldiers, sexual slavery, rape, pillaging and wanton destruction of property in the attack on Bogoro. The village had up to then been controlled by the Forces Patriotiques pour la Liberation du Congo (FPLC) — a rival to Katanga´s Force de Resistance Patriotique en Ituri (FRPI) and Ngudjolo´s Front des Nationalistes et Integrationnistes (FNI).

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. Lawyers for 56 victims represented at Friday´s hearing urged the court to confirm the charges and allow the men to be tried. Jean-Louis Gilissen, representing former child soldiers, said his clients had been physically and mentally destroyed by their experiences. “These are young men who have remained children because they are scarred forever in their bodies and in their minds,” he told the judges. “We are representing young children who were forced to follow adults, to go to training camps where they were treated like animals … and in the end were forced to commit acts they would never have imagined,” he said.

“The damage is huge. It is more than a generation that has been sacrificed.” Carine Bapita Buyagandu said some victims lost their entire families. “They have no past,” she stated. “If they die today, they have no family line.” Defence lawyers will get an opportunity for statements on Monday.