HEADLINES:
R/€ Warlords plead not guilty to DRC crimes
November 25, 2009 Edition 1
THE HAGUE: Two Congolese militiamen accused of seeking to wipe out a village blocking a strategic route in an ethnic war pleaded not guilty to war crimes in the International Criminal Court yesterday.
"I plead not guilty," Germain Katanga replied to each of the 10 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against him, a plea echoed count for count by his co-accused Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui.
Katanga, 31, and Ngudjolo, 39, stand accused over an attack by their forces on the village of Bogoro in the Democratic Republic of Congo's north-eastern Ituri region that killed 200 people in February, 2003.
They face charges of murder, rape, sexual slavery, using child soldiers, attacking civilians, pillaging and destruction of property.
Their trial is only the ICC's second, and its first for murder.
The prosecution says more than 1 000 fighters of Katanga's Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri (FRPI) and Ngudjolo's National Integrationist Front (FNI) entered Bogoro on February 24 six years ago "with one communicated and agreed goal: to erase the village".
They are alleged to have killed civilians, burning some alive in their homes, raped women, taken captive children to swell their ranks of child soldiers, and captured women as sex slaves.
"It is alleged that the roads to and from the village were blocked by the attackers in order to kill all civilians attempting to flee," states a court document.
Children were used in the Bogoro attack - killing and pillaging, says the prosecution.
Until the attack, the village had been controlled by rival Thomas Lubanga's Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), blocking FRPI and FNI fighters and camps from the road to the key city of Bunia.
The trial is expected to last several months, with the prosecution set to call 26 witnesses, 19 of whom will benefit from protective measures for their security. - Sapa-AFP
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