Béatrice Le Fraper du Hellen is the Head of the Jurisdiction Complementarity and Cooperation Division of the Office of The Prosecutor (OTP) at the International Criminal Court. She spoke to the Lubanga Trial website’s Wairagala Wakabi about the role which intermediaries played in the war crimes case against former Congolese leader Thomas Lubanga, the view…
A former child soldier on Thursday recalled how he was abducted by militiamen belonging to the group which Thomas Lubanga allegedly led, got tortured at a training camp, and watched his friends get killed in battle “like flies”. The former child soldier was the second participating victim to give evidence at the Lubanga trial. He…
A protected witness testified at the International Criminal Court (ICC) entirely in closed session on Thursday. While his role was not disclosed, he spoke very briefly about the Ituri conflict in open court on Wednesday before the proceedings adjourned. “When I set up my activities in [Ituri] in 1998 … there was latent conflict there,…
A former child soldier deflected questions during cross-examination today and accused Thomas Lubanga’s defense lawyers of trying to trap him. “What you’re doing is satisfying yourself with information provided to you by your client,” the witness told Marc Desalliers, one of Lubanga’s lawyers. “Perhaps the court will decide that [Lubanga] is innocent…. But what I…
Some recruits in the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) training camps were just five years old, according to a witness in the continuing trial of accused Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga. The witness told judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague that the UPC leadership thought such young recruits made good soldiers…
The rapid rise of accused Congolese leader Thomas Lubanga within the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) and his role in the group’s militia were revealed this week in his trial before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Lubanga started as a bean seller at a market in the Ituri regional center of Bunia in…
A social worker who helped to reintegrate former child soldiers in Congo’s Ituri district told the court on Thursday that some families were unhappy when their children left militia groups. “We had huge difficulties to reintegrate them as many families were hostile to their returning,” said the witness, Serge Kilo Ngabu. “Many families considered this…
An attempt by a rich family in Bunia to drive ethnic Lendu from their land sparked the Ituri region’s bloody ethnic conflict, according to testimony on Wednesday. Continuing his testimony from the previous day, a former political leader in Ituri told the Lubanga trial that the Savo family, ethnic Hema who were financial backers of…
The Thomas Lubanga trial resumed on Tuesday with a former political leader in the Ituri region telling the court that Uganda trained hundreds of Congolese fighters, including children, who later served in Lubanga’s militia. The witness also said Lubanga sold beans at Bunia market before he became a spokesperson for Hema ethnic militias, and later…
Questions were raised this week about Thomas Lubanga’s control over the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) militia, following testimony that as the group’s president, his role was largely political, not military. Lubanga is on trial at the International Criminal Court on charges of conscripting and using children to fight in the Ituri region of the…
Thomas Lubanga on trial at the International Criminal Court. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is the first person to be tried by the International Criminal Court. A former rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lubanga is accused of conscripting, enlisting, and using child soldiers. More
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