Compensation from ICC to war crime victims

The Hague, March 22: Judges at the International Criminal Court may on Friday award the tribunal’s first monetary sums to victims of war crimes, with lawyers estimating some $16.4 million in damages were caused by a 2003 attack on a Congolese village.

Friday’s order for reparations for 304 victims of former Congolese warlord Germain Katanga is set to be a landmark step for the world’s only permanent war crimes court. “Reparations should place the victim in a situation as close as possible to that before the crime was committed,” Fidel Nsita Luvengika, the legal representative for victims, argued in a 2016 filing to the court in The Hague.

Katanga was sentenced by the ICC to 12 years in jail in 2014, after being convicted on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the February 2003 attack on Bogoro village in Ituri province. Some 200 people were shot or hacked to death.

Legal representatives have estimated a minimum of $16.4 million in damages was caused, and it may be as high as $24.7 million, even if the “victims are not demanding this sum”.

Katanga, 38, now on trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo on other charges of war crimes and insurrection in the mineral-rich Ituri region, is liable for any compensation.