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The International Criminal Court will rule on an appeal on Tuesday from a Congolese warlord known as the “Terminator”, who received the longest war crimes sentence ever handed down by the court.
Rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda was convicted by the Hague-based ICC in 2019 for a reign of terror in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the early 2000s, and jailed for 30 years.
The 47-year-old, born in Rwanda, has been convicted of 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, sexual slavery, rape and the use of child soldiers.
Ntaganda was the first person to be sentenced to sexual slavery by the court. Many of the other charges involved massacres of villagers in the mineral-rich region of Ituri in the DRC.
The ICC appeal judges will deliver their decision on his appeal against his conviction and conviction at 13:00 GMT.
The court earlier this month awarded Ntaganda’s victims $ 30 million (€ 25 million) in reparations, on condition that he is convicted on appeal.
The tribunal asked the tribunal’s trust fund for victims to arrange for reparations to be made or to find additional funds if needed, as Ntaganda was unable to pay.
Ntaganda’s lawyers said when they announced his intention to appeal that the 46-year-old Rwandan was “at peace with himself” and “remained well and strong”.
They said the ICC decision to convict him “contains many errors of law and fact.”
Prosecutors have portrayed him as the ruthless leader of ethnic Tutsi revolts amid the civil wars that ravaged the DRC after the 1994 Tutsi genocide in neighboring Rwanda.
‘Key leader’
The judges said Ntaganda was a “key leader” of the Union des patriotes congolais rebel group and its military wing, the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC).
They operated in the unstable province of Ituri, on the eastern border of DR Congo, in 2002 and 2003.
The FPLC killed at least 800 people while fighting rival militias for control of precious minerals. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the region since violence erupted there in 1999.
Judges found that during an attack on a banana field led by Ntaganda, soldiers used sticks, knives and machetes to kill at least 49 captives, including children and babies.
A former Congolese army general, Ntaganda became a founding member of the M23 rebel group, which was ultimately defeated by Congolese government forces in 2013.
Later that year, he became the first suspect to surrender to the ICC, when he entered the United States Embassy in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.
Ntaganda – known for his pencil mustache and penchant for gastronomy – said during his trial that he was “a soldier, not a criminal”.
He insisted that the nickname “Terminator,” referring to films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a relentless killer robot, did not apply to him.
His defense team said the judgment against him “did not reflect the truth or the reality.”
Although his conviction was seen as a boost for the ICC after the release of several high-level suspects, the court was also criticized for primarily trying African suspects.
He is one of five people convicted by the tribunal since its inception in 2002 for trying the world’s most serious crimes.
In another major decision on Wednesday, the ICC will rule on an appeal by the prosecution against the acquittal of former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.
(AFP)
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