(AFP) – Jun 11, 2008

THE HAGUE (AFP) — The International Criminal Court announced Wednesday that its first-ever war crimes trial, involving former Congolese militia chief Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, will no longer open on June 23.

"During a public hearing held on 11 June 2008, Trial-Chamber I announced that the trial in the Lubanga case will not start on 23 June 2008, as previously scheduled," said a statement from the court, without giving a reason or a new starting date.

Approached for detail, a spokeswoman cited only "procedural reasons," saying that the judges will explain their decision in writing within the next week.

A lawyer for the accused, Jean-Marie Biju-Duval, had asked Tuesday that the trial be declared "impossible" following a dispute over disclosure of certain pieces of evidence.

He had complained that the prosecutor had not given the defence letters produced by the United Nations, and that they were to be provided only to the bench, in the absence of the defence.

Lubanga, 47, is accused of abducting minors under 15 and using child soldiers in attacks by the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots between September 2002 and August 2003 in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to humanitarian non-governmental organisations, inter-ethnic fighting and violence involving militias in the country's Ituri province -- centred on control over one of the most lucrative gold-mining territories in the world -- lies behind some 60,000 deaths going back to 1999.

The conflict has also created tens of thousands of refugees, they say.

Lubanga's trial would be the first before the ICC, set up six years ago as a worldwide permanent court mandated to try war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Since the court took up its functions, it has opened four investigations into crimes committed in DR Congo, Uganda, Sudan and Central African Republic, issuing 10 arrest warrants.

For DR Congo, the ICC has issued three arrest warrants and currently has three Congolese war crimes suspects in custody.

Lubanga was transferred to the court in March 2006. Two of his rival warlords, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, arrived at the ICC detention unit in October 2007 and February 2008 respectively.

The prosecutor accuses the three men of crimes committed in the mineral rich Ituri region of DR Congo.

Ituri was wracked by ethnic bloodshed between the Hema and Lendu peoples from 1999 and embroiled in a broader rebel war that raged in the DR Congo between 1998 and 2003, drawing in more than half a dozen African armies.

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