THE HAGUE (AFP) — A former militia leader in Democratic Republic of Congo was transferred into the custody of the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Thursday to stand trial for the massacre of some 200 villagers in 2003, court officials said.
Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, former head of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), is accused of ordering his forces to "wipe out" the village of Bogoro, in the northeast Ituri region.
"Hundreds were killed, maimed or terrorised. Women were forced to become sexual slaves. The village was pillaged by FNI forces and razed to the ground," the court's deputy prosecutor Fatou Besouda said.
Ngudjolo, believed to be 37 years old, was arrested in Kinshasa on Wednesday on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sent immediately to The Hague, DR Congo Justice Minister Symphorien Mutombo Bakafwa said.
Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Ngudjolo's transfer to The Hague "completes the first phase of the DR Congo investigations" focusing on crimes in the Ituri region.
"We are now moving on to our third case in the DR Congo, with applications for other arrest warrants in the coming months and years," he said from Central African Republic, where he is on a visit.
Moreno Ocampo said his team now will turn its attention to the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, where "there are clear reports of serious crimes being committed even today".
"There will be no impunity for the worst perpetrators of the worst crimes in the DR Congo," he said.
Since 1999, clashes among militias and tribal killings have claimed at least 60,000 lives in mineral-rich Ituri, which borders on Uganda, and displaced more than 600,000 people, according to aid agencies.
The prosecution alleges that Ngudjolo, "as the highest ranking FNI commander, played an essential role in designing and implementing an indiscriminate attack against the village of Bogoro, in the territory of Ituri, on or around 24 February 2003".
About 200 civilians were murdered, while others were tortured, imprisoned in a room filled with corpses, or used as sex slaves, according to the arrest warrant.
The attack was allegedly agreed by Ngudjolo and other commanders from the FNI and the Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri (FRPI). The arrest warrant lists nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of child soldiers.
Ngudjolo is the third person in the custody of the International Criminal Court, after the transfer in October by the Congolese authorities of Germain Katanga, a Congolese national and alleged commander of the FRPI.
Katanga has also been charged in connection with the Bogoro attack.
"For convenience, it would be good to try them together, but that is a determination for the court to make," Bensouda said.
In March 2006, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a Congolese national and alleged founder and leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), was the first ICC suspect to be sent to The Hague.
The ICC prosecutor opened investigations in DR Congo in June 2004 after the Congolese government referred the situation in the country to the court, and Lubanga and Katanga were arrested in Kinshasa in March 2005.
Ngudjolo, a colonel with DR Congo's government army (FARDC), was arrested at a Kinshasa military academy where he was being trained since November last year after leaving Ituri following a July 2006 peace accord.
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