DRC warlord accused on trial
CONGOLESE warlord Bosco Ntaganda pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges of crimes including the rape of child soldiers in a campaign of pillage and murder in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s north-eastern Ituri province in the early 2000s.
Rwandan-born Ntaganda is accused by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court of conspiring to expand the power of the Hema ethnic group and seize the province’s vast oil, diamond and gold wealth for himself.
He faces 18 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in all, including murder, rape, pillage and persecution, under a doctrine of international law that allows him to be charged personally with offences committed by forces under his command.
One alleged co-conspirator is Thomas Lubanga, who is serving a 14-year prison sentence after becoming the court’s first convicted defendant in 2012.
Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told judges that fighters from Ntaganda’s Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) had lured ethnic Lendus occupying the land they wanted to purported peace talks in order to capture and kill them.
“Bosco Ntaganda was the UPC’s highest commander, in charge of operations and organisation,” she told the court, adding that he had allowed the slaughter to go unpunished. One witness found the bodies of his own wife and children among victims of the slaughter in a banana field. Their throats had been slit and his infant daughter’s skull was staved in.
They were just five of an estimated 5 000 civilians killed during the 2002 to 2003 campaign. Bensouda said Ntaganda had praised the field commander responsible as “a real man”.
Bensouda said female child soldiers had been kept as sex slaves, “objects” freely available to other soldiers in Ntaganda’s militia.
Ntaganda, a tall man with a pencil moustache, was known as “The Terminator” during his time commanding the UPC and a related guerilla army, the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC).
He rose to tell the court: “I plead not guilty to the charges.” The trial is the first test of a new team assembled by Bensouda, who has promised more rigorous prosecution of cases after a series of highprofile failures.
Ntaganda was indicted in 2006 but remained on the run for years, fighting in conflicts on and around the DRC’s border with Rwanda. In 2013, fearing for his life, he handed himself in at the US embassy in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.
In Ituri, the local population were following radio updates of the trial, said Bienvenu Ukej, the director of Justice Plus, a human rights organisation in the provincial capital, Bunia. He said the fact that the trial was taking place was “already a step towards relief and some rehabilitation”.
The ICC, set up in 2002 to prosecute the most serious international crimes, has convicted only little-known warlords, all from the Ituri conflicts. Its case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta collapsed after witness withdrawals undermined an already brittle case.
Many of its highest-profile accused, from Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to Saif alIslam, the son of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, remain at large, with their governments refusing to hand them over. – Reuters LONDON: Greenpeace campaigners, including actress Emma Thompson, installed an animatronic polar bear the size of a double-decker bus outside Shell’s London headquarters to demonstrate against the company’s drilling in the Arctic yesterday.
The 60-odd activists, six of whom are attached to the threeton bear named Aurora, moved into place early in the morning. The bear “roared” throughout the morning.
Greenpeace is demanding Shell halt drilling in the Arctic, which the environmental group says is placing the area at extreme risk of an oil spill. Researchers claim the company’s drilling is incompatible with limiting global warming to no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels.
Thompson, who read an original poem penned for Shell bosses, said Shell’s drilling “breaks” her heart and that their actions “threaten not only their habitat but ours”.
“Make no mistake, we’re next,” she said. “That’s why I’ve come to their HQ. I’m here to say no. I’m here to say this has to end. I’m one of millions of people demanding that this company pulls out of the Arctic, and this huge polar bear is roaring with our voices.”
Activist Patrick Earls said Shell’s actions were “outrageous”.
About 1 000 people work in the Southbank building, which is undergoing refurbishment.
The demonstration came as a leading US environmentalist criticised Barack Obama’s apparent about-turn on drilling in the Arctic.
Bill McKibben, the winner of the Right Livelihood prize in 2014, called the US president’s decision to allow Shell to drill in the Artic until September 28 a “bad contradiction”.
The Arctic contains roughly 25% of the world’s total reserves of oil and gas. In 2015 scientists recorded the lowest sea ice maximum ever.
A Shell spokeswoman said: “Shell respects the right of people to protest against the activities we undertake to ensure the world’s energy needs are met.” – The Independent