Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), said on Monday that he was seeking new warrants for the arrests of two rebel leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Addressing a news conference at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, Ocampo expressed hopes that the two new arrest warrants would contribute to establishing peace and security in the Great Lakes region of the DRC.
Ocampo said he was seeking new charges against Congolese rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda and a fresh arrest warrant for Sylvestre Mudacumura, the supreme commander of the Rwandan rebel group known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). He alleged that both the rebel leaders are responsible for continued war crimes and crimes against humanity in the DRC.
Incidentally, the ICC had issued an arrest warrant for Ntaganda in 2006 for crimes committed against civilians in the Ituri region of DRC from 2002 to 2003. Later, Ntaganda's National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) rebel group was integrated into the national army in 2009 under a peace deal between the rebel group and the Congolese government.
Under the deal, Ntaganda, one of the top commanders in the militia led by Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo who was convicted in March by the ICC for crimes in DRC, was made a General. DR Congo's President Joseph Kabila had earlier refused to arrest Gen. Ntaganda citing the 2009 peace deal.
Nevertheless, some 400 to 500 renegade soldiers led by Ntaganda deserted their base in Goma earlier this month and launched an offensive against government troops. They were joined later by hundreds of others in fighting the government forces.
Ocampos said he was seeking to expand the existing charges against Ntaganda to include murder, persecution based on ethnic grounds, rape, sexual slavery, attacking civilians and pillaging. He said the decision was based on evidence that emerged from Lubanga's recently concluded trial.
As far as Mudacumura is concerned, the international community considers his FDLR group to be the most recent incarnation of Rwandan rebel groups established by Rwandan Hutus responsible for the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and Hutu moderates in Rwanda. The group is said to have been involved in crimes in eastern DRC for some time.
"The followers of Ntaganda and Mudacumura have to understand that it is time for them to demobilize and stop their crimes, even help in arresting the leaders," the ICC prosecutor, whose term of office comes to an end next month, said.
Stressing that any new plan to attack these groups must take into consideration the fact that past military operations against them have produced civilian casualties, Ocampo added: "So it's time to refine the methods and we hope the Congolese Army and the Rwandan Army, if it is involved, can transform these military operations into arrest operations."
The ICC, which is based in The Hague, was established in 2002 as the world's first permanent war crimes court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. It is authorized to try cases involving individuals charged with war crimes committed since July 2002.
The U.N. Security Council, the ICC prosecutor or a State Party to the court are allowed to initiate any proceedings in such cases, but the U.N.-backed court only acts when countries themselves are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute. In addition to the situation in DRC, the Court has ongoing investigations in the Central African Republic, the Darfur region of western Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Libya and Ivory Coast.
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