The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s office has filed (Monday) at the Pre-Trial Chamber a request for new international arrest warrant against Gen. Jean Bosco Ntaganda.
A statement from the prosecutor of the ICC, Fatou Bensuda indicates that the prosecution will request the addition of charges against Gen. Ntaganda for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed between September 2002 and September 2003.
Gen. Ntaganda is already under an arrest warrant issued by the ICC in 2006 for crimes of recruiting, conscripting and using children under 15 years for them to participate actively in hostilities.
According to the prosecutor, this application is running to the verdict and evidence presented at trial against Thomas Lubanga, who was convicted by the ICC to have recruited children into its forces and using them to participate in combat.
The crimes that Gen. Ntaganda is accused were committed in Ituri in Orientale Province during the war inter-ethnic Hema and Lendu militias by the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), which he was one of the commanders.
He resisted arrest for “his contributions to the signing of the peace agreement between the government and armed groups from the East in 2009” and its transfer to the ICC.
The Congolese government said early May that Gen. Ntaganda should be arrested, accusing him of being responsible for the defections recorded within the Congolese army and destabilization in the Masisi and Walikale in North Kivu.
But authorities believe that the general should be judged by Congolese courts.
For the prosecutor of the ICC, “the price of this impunity is very large.”
“When there is impunity, it is the people on the ground who suffer,” she wrote in a statement, calling for the arrest of Gen. Ntaganda.
“His recent desertion from the FARDC only demonstrates once again that you can not trust him and that the exercise of power through violence can only lead to more violence,” said the prosecutor in his statement.
Fatou Bensuda has also initiated a second arrest warrant against Mudacumura Sylvester, supreme commander of the FDLR-FOCA, charged with five counts of crimes against humanity and nine counts war crimes.
The alleged crimes were committed by the armed group between 20 January 2009 and August 31, 2010, in the provinces of North and South Kivu.
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