The International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled on Friday there were sufficient grounds to try two militiamen accused of seeking to wipe out an entire village in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2003.
A panel of judges ”decided to commit Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui for trial” for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a court statement said.
Among other charges, they will stand accused of using children under 15 as bodyguards and combatants, killing civilians, and for sexual slavery and rape committed in hostilities in the DRC’s north-eastern Ituri region.
”With calculated precision, more than 1 000 soldiers … under the command of Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui entered the village with one communicated and agreed goal: to erase the village of Bogoro,” deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda argued before the court in June.
Friday’s ruling completed an extended confirmation of charges process, which requires a pre-trial chamber to validate the prosecution’s indictment.
There was sufficient evidence, the court found, that Katanga (30) and Ngudjolo (37) committed murder ”as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population in the Ituri region”.
No trial has yet started before the court, which started operating as the world’s first permanent and independent war-crimes tribunal in 2002.
Its first trial, that of another Congolese militiaman, Thomas Lubanga, was to have started in July but was stalled when the court ruled that prosecutors had wrongly withheld evidence from his lawyers.
The prosecution accuses Katanga and Ngudjolo of planning and ordering the destruction of Bogoro village in the Ituri district on February 24 2003.
It says more than 200 children, women, elderly and civilian men were killed in the attack, during which women were sexually enslaved in camps and repeatedly raped.
On Friday, the court held there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the men for planning the attack against civilians, resulting in killings, destruction of property and pillaging.
There was also sufficient evidence of sexual slavery and rape during and after the attack, and of the use of children as bodyguards and combatants.
The accused, both of the Lendu ethnic group, were the chiefs of two militia groups that ravaged the Ituri region in confrontations with ethnic Hema groups.
The trial may not start for many months yet.
Both men are in the custody of the ICC — Katanga since October last year and Ngudjolo since February this year. — Sapa-AFP