DRC - Warrant For Arrest Against Bosco Ntaganda

The International Criminal Court has unsealed a warrant for arrest against Bosco Ntaganda also known as the “Terminator” this past Tuesday. This 35 year Congolese is accused to have committed war crimes of enlisting children as young as 15 between July 2002 and December 2003.

This warrant for arrest issued by the Pre-Trial Chamber I in 2006, remained under seal for many reasons. ICC claimed that Bosco Ntaganda would have fled, and or obstructed if not endangered the investigation or the proceedings of the Courts once he had knowledge of this warrant.

Since the circumstances which triggered the sealing in the warrant in the first place have changed, the Prosecution and the Registry agreed that ‘the unsealing of the warrant of arrest for Bosco Ntaganda will not endanger the witnesses of the DRC cases’ and that this was the ‘right moment’ to make it public.

According to the ICC, Bosco Ntaganda, a former Deputy Chief of General Staff for Military Operations of the Forces Patriotiques Pour la Liberation du Congo (FPLC) or the Patriotic Front for the Liberation of the Congo, had full knowledge and authority of many FPLC training camps where these children received the training and then forced to participate in the warfare.

The FPLC fought against other militia groups in the Ituri region of the Democratic republic of Congo for a period of four years, from 1999 to 2003 over control of natural resources which had claimed for than 50,000 lives and many other displaced.

Former FPLC Commander-in-Chief and UPC founder and leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is in custody in the Hague where his trial is scheduled to start on 23 June 2008 along with Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ndgudjolo. More warrant for arrest against Congolese who has committed war crimes are likely to be issued.