THE HAGUE, Netherlands— Children snatched from Congo streets were trained to kill and forced to fight in a brutal ethnic war, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said Monday as the tribunal opened its historic first trial.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands— Children snatched from Congo streets were trained to kill and forced to fight in a brutal ethnic war, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said Monday as the tribunal opened its historic first trial.
Children as young as 9, ripped from their families, were told “their gun was father and mother and would feed and clothe them,” Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the three-judge panel in the trial of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga.
Lubanga’s trial has been hailed as a legal landmark by human rights activists because it is the first international criminal prosecution to focus solely on child soldiers and the first to include the participation of witnesses.
It also marks the coming of age for the International Criminal Court, six years after it was set up.
Prosecutors plan to call 34 witnesses, including nine former child soldiers, and hope to wrap up their case in a few months.
Lubanga, wearing a dark suit and red tie, showed no emotion as his lawyer Catherine Mabille said he pleaded not guilty to using children under age 15 as soldiers in the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots political party in 2002-03.
Lubanga’s militia “recruited, trained and used hundreds of young children to kill, pillage and rape. The children still suffer the consequences of Lubanga’s crimes,” Moreno-Ocampo said.
He said he would seek a sentence close to the maximum, which could be either 30 years or life depending on the severity of his crimes.
Moreno-Ocampo showed judges video of Lubanga addressing recruits — including young men and children dressed in military fatigues or T-shirts and shorts — at a training camp.
Girls were particularly vulnerable, Moreno-Ocampo said.
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