The International Criminal Court upheld its decision on Tuesday, March 30. The former warlord and general of the Congolese army is guilty of 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ituri in 2002 and 2003. At the time, the nickname Terminator was one of the leaders of the UPC, one of the militias involved in the civil war. No mitigating circumstances were acknowledged.
Thirty years in prison is the heaviest sentence ever handed down by the International Criminal Court. It must be said that the list of crimes that Bosco Ntaganda was accused of is long: massacres, rapes, sexual slavery, forced relocation campaigns, recruitment of child soldiers … This warlord was even accused and found guilty of killing a priest with his own hands.
The appeals judges have confirmed that Bosco Ntaganda, military leader of the UPC, had played a crucial role in the crimes committed by his troops in 2002 and 2003 in Ituri. It is therefore the end of a lawsuit that began in 2006 when the ICC issues an arrest warrant against the man nicknamed Terminator for his brutality, an arrest warrant that remains secret until 2008.
At that time, Bosco Ntaganda was no longer in Ituri, but in northern Kivu he was one of the military leaders of Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP uprising. That year, he was accused of, among other things, a massacre in Kiwanja, a crime that he was suspected of in northern Kivu, without ever having been tried.
The following year, he became a general of the Congolese army thanks to a peace treaty. Bosco Ntaganda returned to insurgency in 2012 after rumors of arrest. This is the birth of the M23. His eternal rebellious career ended in 2013 when he, threatened by his former comrades, surrendered to the US Embassy in Kigali.
► Also read:ICC former Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda sentenced to 30 years in prison
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