The International Criminal Court has sentenced Congolese warlord Germain Katanga to 12 years in jail.
Katanga had been in March found guilty of war crimes.
“The chamber sentences Germain Katanga to 12 years in prison,” presiding Judge Bruno Cotte told the Hague-based court in its second sentencing since opening in 2003.
The almost seven years that Katanga has already spend in detention will be deducted from the sentence, he said.
He is only the second person to be convicted by the court.
He was behind the 2003 massacre of hundreds of villagers in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The fighting escalated into an inter-ethnic conflict that is estimated to have killed 50,000 people.
Katanga, who is known to his supporters as Simba or “the lion”, was found guilty of planning the ambush on the village in the gold-rich Ituri province of north-eastern DR Congo.
The rebel leader was also found to have procured the weapons – including guns and machetes – used to kill more than 200 of the villagers, but he was acquitted of direct involvement.
Katanga, 36, was also cleared of using child soldiers and of committing sexual crimes.
NMG
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