Congo warlord's trial makes history at International Court

The International Criminal Court’s historic first trial will begin today with a Congolese warlord facing six charges of recruiting and sending child soldiers to fight and die in bloody ethnic battles.

The case finally goes to trial at The Hague, in the Netherlands, more than six years after the court started work and six months later than planned after a fierce debate about confidential evidence derailed the case last year.

Thomas Lubanga, aged 48, is expected to plead not guilty to using children under 15 as soldiers in the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots political party in 2002-2003.

Lubanga claims he was a patriot fighting to prevent rebels and foreign fighters from plundering the vast mineral wealth of Congo’s eastern Ituri region.

The United Nations estimates that up to 250,000 child soldiers are still fighting in more than a dozen countries around the world and activists say Lubanga’s trial will send a vital message to the armies in Congo and elsewhere that recruit them.

“This first ICC trial makes it clear that the use of children in armed combat is a war crime that can and will be prosecuted at the international level,” said Param-Preet Singh, counsel in Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Programme.

Lubanga was arrested by Congolese authorities in 2005 and flown to The Hague a year later. He is one of only four suspects in the court’s custody – all of them Congolese.

Originally slated to begin last June, the trial was held up for six months amid a dispute between judges and prosecutors over confidential evidence.

The United Nations and non-governmental groups provided more than 200 pieces of evidence – some of which prosecutors said might help Lubanga clear his name – on condition they not be shown to defence lawyers or even to the judges in the case.

That raised fears Lubanga might be unable to get a fair trial. It took months of wrangling before judges and Lubanga’s lawyers were granted access to the evidence, clearing the way for the trial to start.

The hearings before a three-judge panel will be the first international trial to feature the participation of victims. A total of 93 victims of the Ituri violence will be represented by eight lawyers and can apply for reparations.

While many international war crimes cases can drag on for years, prosecutors, who plan to call 34 witnesses, hope to wrap up their case against Lubanga in a few months.

Several of the witnesses will be former child soldiers who will recount the horror of their military service.

Warlords use everything from drugs to sorcery to turn them into ruthless killers, snatching away their childhood innocence, said Bukeni Tete Waruzi, an activist who has helped demobilise hundreds of children from brutal militias in the east of Congo.

As a way of proving their worthiness to fight, some are ordered to murder their own relatives. Girls also are sent to fight or turned into sex slaves.

“I have met one boy who was 12-years-old, a colonel,” Mr Waruzi said. “He had been able to kill his uncle when others were fearing to do so.”