Congolese warlord Bosco 'Terminator' Ntaganda convicted of crimes against humanity by ICC
A notorious warlord whose militia of child soldiers butchered and disembowelled civilians during a reign of terror in northeastern Congo 17 years ago is facing life in prison after being convicted of war crimes.
Bosco Ntaganda showed no emotion as judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Monday found him guilty of 18 charges, ranging from murder, rape, sexual slavery and the conscription of the boys he used to carry out his atrocities.
As a military commander in Ituri province, Ntaganda was a central figure in one of the most chilling episodes of the war that swept through the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 to 2003.
Known in Ituri as “The Terminator”, Ntaganda commanded operations for the military wing of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an ethnic militia that seized control of swathes of Ituri, including its capital Bunia, in 2002.
More than 50,000 people were killed in Ituri as the UPC, drawn mostly from the Hema ethnic group, fought militias led by their Lendu rivals.
Most of the dead were civilians, massacred by both sides. United Nations peacekeepers, poorly armed, badly led and insufficiently armed, watched helplessly as UPC militiamen taunted them by tossing corpses over the walls of their compound.
Child soldiers as young as nine, press-ganged into fighting and brainwashed into bloodlust by watching violent videos, sauntered along the streets where dogs fed off the dead.
One, a boy of 10, told the Telegraph at the time how he had personally cut the throats of "at least ten people". Judges in the court made reference to one particularly grisly incident when Ntaganda’s men led a group of 49 captured men, women, children and babies into a banana plantation and beat them to death.
“Some bodies were found naked, some had their hands tied up and some had their heads crushed,” Justice Robert Fremr said as he read out the verdicts.
“Several bodies were disembowelled or otherwise mutilated.” Activists welcomed the verdict, just the fourth on war crimes charges the ICC has reached since it was established in 2002.
Five other defendants have been convicted on witness tampering charges.
