Trial of former Congolese rebel leaders resumes

Jan 26, 2010, 6:26 GMT

The Hague - The trial against two former rebel leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo was to resume Tuesday at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The trials of Germaine Katanga, 31, and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, 39, for war crimes during DR Congo's ethnic conflict were suspended December 2 when one of the presiding judges was injured in a car accident.

The accused, both from the Lendu ethnic group, are charged with orchestrating the massacre of several hundred civilians from the Hema ethnic group in 2003.

On February 24 that year, militias from the Lendu and other allied tribes were alleged to have attacked the Hema village of Borogo in the Ituri district in the north-east of the country.

The fighters are said to have killed, plundered and raped their way through the village, leaving around 200 civilians dead.

Katanga and Ngudjolo Chui, as commanders of the armed groups responsible for the massacre, stand jointly accused of three counts of crimes against humanity and seven of war crimes, including willful killing.

The two former army commanders are also accused of using child soldiers, a war crime under the Statute of Rome, the court's founding document.

Both men denied all the charges.

In 1994, an ethnic conflict erupted in the former Belgian colony of the DR Congo when rebels crossed the border after the genocide in Rwanda. The war formally ended in 2003, but fighting continued in the east of the country.

From January 2002 to December 2003, an ethnic conflict between the Hema and Lendu was estimated to have displaced more than 500,000 civilians and caused 8,000 deaths.

The International Criminal Court, an independent, permanent court founded in 1998 in cooperation with the United Nations, entered operation in 2002 with the aim of prosecuting the world's most serious war crimes.

The case is only the second to make it to trial at the court and the first involving charges of killing. The trial of Thomas Lubanga, another former militia leader from DR Congo charged with using child soldiers, began in January 2009.

Other investigations by the Court into the conflicts in Uganda, Central African Republic and Darfur are ongoing.