ICC-01/04-02/06-T-23-ENG ET WT 02-09-2015 1/67 SZ T
Trial Hearing (Open Session) ICC-01/04-02/06
1 International Criminal Court
2 Trial Chamber VI - Courtroom 1
3 Situation: Democratic Republic of the Congo
4 In the case of The Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda - ICC-01/04-02/06
5 Presiding Judge Robert Fremr, Judge Kuniko Ozaki and Judge Chang-ho Chung
6 Trial Hearing
7 Wednesday, 2 September 2015
8 (The hearing starts in open session at 9.32 a.m.)
9 THE COURT USHER: All rise.
10 The International Criminal Court is now in session.
11 Please be seated.
12 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Good morning, everybody.
13 Court officer, please call the case.
14 THE COURT OFFICER: Thank you, Mr President.
15 The situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the case of The Prosecutor
16 versus Bosco Ntaganda, case reference ICC-01/04-02/06.
17 We are in open session.
18 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you.
19 First of all, I would like to welcome the parties, the participants, Mr Bosco Ntaganda,
20 the accused. I also welcome those who are watching this hearing from the public
21 gallery.
22 Now I ask for appearances and I would appreciate if lead counsels introduce themself
23 and members of their team, starting with Prosecution.
24 Madam Prosecutor, please.
25 MS BENSOUDA: Thank you, Mr President. Mr President, the Office of the
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Trial Hearing (Open Session) ICC-01/04-02/06
1 Prosecutor is represented in this matter by Nicole Samson, senior trial lawyer; Dianne
2 Luping, trial lawyer; Eric Iverson, trial lawyer; Julieta Solano, trial lawyer; Rens van
3 der Werf, assistant trial lawyer; Pascal Turlan, judicial cooperation adviser; Abdoul
4 Aziz Mbaye, international cooperation adviser; Selamawit Yirgou, case manager; Mr
5 President, and myself, Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor.
6 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much, Madam Prosecutor.
7 Now, Defence, please.
8 MR BOURGON: (Interpretation) Good morning, Mr President, your Honours and
9 everybody present in the courtroom. It is my pleasure to present the Defence team
10 of Mr Ntaganda. You have Mr Michielsen, intern; you have the case manager,
11 Margaux Portier; you have William St-Michel; Chloé Grandon; Maître Luc Boutin;
12 and myself, Stéphane Bourgon. Thank you, Mr President.
13 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you, Mr Bourgon.
14 And finally Legal Representatives of Victims, please.
15 MS PELLET: (Interpretation) Thank you, Mr President, your Honours. The
16 group of former child soldiers is represented by myself, Sarah Pellet, counsel at the
17 OPCV; and Mr Abdou Mohamed, associate legal officer; and Maître Frank Mulenda,
18 who unfortunately for unavoidable reasons is unable to be present today.
19 MR SUPRUN: (Interpretation) Good morning, your Honours. The victims of the
20 attacks are represented today by Ana Grabowski, associate legal officer; Cherine
21 Luzaisu, field counsel; and myself, Dmytro Suprun.
22 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you both of you.
23 And for the sake of completeness I have to add that Trial Chamber VI of the
24 International Criminal Court is composed of Judge Kuniko Ozaki, on my right; Judge
25 Chang-ho Chung, on my left; and myself, Judge Robert Fremr.
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Trial Hearing (Open Session) ICC-01/04-02/06
1 We are here today for the opening of the trial in the case of the Prosecutor against
2 Mr Bosco Ntaganda.
3 Today, after the charges are read to the accused, we will first hear the opening
4 statement of the Prosecution. This statement is going to be followed probably
5 tomorrow morning by the opening statements of the two Legal Representatives of
6 Victims. And after that, the Defence will present its opening statement that may or
7 may not include an unsworn statement of Mr Ntaganda.
8 But before that, as a preliminary matter, the Chamber will recall some key moments
9 of this proceeding so far.
10 On 22 August 2006 and 13 July 2012, two warrants of arrest were issued for
11 Mr Ntaganda for war crimes and crimes against humanity, allegedly committed in
12 the Ituri district in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002 and 2003. Having
13 voluntarily surrendered on 22 March 2013, Mr Ntaganda was transferred to the Court
14 for his first appearance on 26 March 2013.
15 Then on 9 June 2014, Pre-Trial Chamber II confirmed the charges against
16 Mr Ntaganda.
17 On 18 July 2014, the Presidency constituted Trial Chamber VI and referred to it this
18 case.
19 Since then, the Chamber, along with the parties and participants has conducted the
20 preparatory work that led to today's opening of trial.
21 During this phase, the Chamber also set out the procedure for the admission of
22 victims to participate in trial. To date, 2,159 victims were admitted to participate in
23 the proceedings.
24 On 16 February 2015, in accordance with a decision of the Chamber, the Prosecution
25 filed an updated Document Containing the Charges.
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Trial Hearing (Open Session) ICC-01/04-02/06
1 On 19 March 2015, the Chamber recommended to the ICC Presidency that the
2 opening be held in Bunia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, the
3 Presidency, after consideration of all factors at stake, decided that the potential
4 benefits of holding proceedings in Bunia were outweighed by heightened concerns
5 for the safety and well-being of victims and witnesses, as well as the increased
6 logistical difficulties of holding this part of the trial in Bunia.
7 On 2 June 2015, the Chamber issued a decision on the conduct of proceedings
8 whereby it adopted directions for the conduct of the proceedings, the presentation of
9 evidence and the modalities of victim participation. In that decision, the Chamber
10 also directed the parties to raise any objections or observations within the meaning of
11 Rule 134(2) by 15 June 2015. The Chamber further notes that no such objections or
12 observations were raised, but it is needless to add that the Defence filed just yesterday
13 an application on behalf of Mr Ntaganda challenging the jurisdiction of the Court in
14 respect of Counts 9 and 6 of the Document Containing the Charges. The Prosecution
15 still has to file its response and afterwards the Chamber will adjudicate this matter in
16 due course.
17 At the end of this brief summary, before turning to the reading of the charges,
18 I would like to express the Chamber's appreciation for the hard work of both parties,
19 the Legal Representatives of Victims and the Registry during the preparatory phase of
20 this trial and for the efforts made to maintain timelines consistent with the fair and
21 expeditious conduct of proceedings in accordance with Article 64(2). And I confirm
22 that the Chamber will do its best to continue in the same way.
23 In accordance with Article 64(8)(a) of the Rome Statute, the charges will now be read
24 to Mr Ntaganda, following which he will be invited to enter his plea.
25 I note that on 29 June 2015, Mr Ntaganda filed a declaration of understanding of the
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Trial Hearing (Open Session) ICC-01/04-02/06
1 charges. In this declaration, Mr Ntaganda confirmed that he is duly informed, in
2 detail, of the nature, cause and content of the charges against him and that he
3 consented that only the charges section of the updated Document Containing the
4 Charges, namely section H(ii), be read out today.
5 Mr Bourgon, please could you just confirm what I just have said on behalf of your
6 client once more for the record.
7 MR BOURGON: (Interpretation) Thank you, Mr President. On behalf of
8 Mr Bosco Ntaganda, I confirm what the Chamber has just stated. Thank you.
9 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much, Mr Bourgon.
10 So now court officer, please read the summary of the charges as contained in the
11 charges section of the updated Document Containing the Charges, please.
12 THE COURT OFFICER: Thank you, Mr President.
13 Count 1: Murder and attempted murder of civilians, a crime against humanity,
14 punishable pursuant to Articles 7(1)(a), as well as 25(3)(a) - direct perpetration and/or
15 indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), 25(3)(f), or 28(a) in Banyali-Kilo
16 collectivité, in or around Mongbwalu, Pluto, Nzebi, Sayo, and Kilo and in the
17 Walendu-Djatsi collectivité in or around Kobu, Sangi, Bambu, Lipri, Tsili, Ngongo
18 and Jitchu.
19 Count 2: Murder and attempted murder of civilians, a war crime, punishable
20 pursuant to Article 8(2)(c)(i), as well as 25(3)(a) - direct perpetration and/or indirect
21 co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), 25(3)(f), or 28(a) in Banyali-Kilo collectivité,
22 in or around Mongbwalu, Pluto, Nzebi, Sayo, and Kilo, and in the Walendu-Djatsi
23 collectivité, in or around Kobu, Sangi, Bambu, Lipri, Tsili, Ngongo and Jitchu.
24 Count 3: Attacks against a civilian population, a war crime, punishable pursuant to
25 Article 8(2)(e)(i), as well as 25(3)(a) - direct perpetration and/or indirect
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1 co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or
2 around Mongbwalu and Sayo, and in the Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around
3 Bambu, Kobu, Lipri, Jitchu, Camp P.M., Buli, Djuba, Sangi, Tsili, Katho, Gola,
4 Mpetsi/Petsi, Avetso, Nyangaray, Pili, Mindjo, Langa, Dyalo, Wadda, Goy, Dhepka,
5 Mbidjo, Thali and Ngabuli.
6 Count 4: Rape of civilians, a crime against humanity, punishable pursuant to Article
7 7(1)(g), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a)
8 in Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or around Mongbwalu, Kilo and Sayo, and in the
9 Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Lipri, Kobu, Bambu, Sangi and Buli.
10 Count 5: Rape of civilians, a war crime, punishable pursuant to Article 8(2)(e)(vi), as
11 well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in
12 Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or around Mongbwalu, Kilo and Sayo, and in the
13 Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Lipri, Kobu, Bambu, Sangi and Buli.
14 Count 6: Rape of UPC/FPLC child soldiers, a war crime, punishable pursuant to
15 Article 8(2)(e)(vi), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii) or
16 28(a).
17 Count 7: Sexual slavery of civilians, a crime against humanity, punishable pursuant
18 to Article 7(1)(g), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or
19 (ii), or 28(a) in Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Kobu, Sangi, Buli, Jitchu and
20 Ngabuli.
21 Count 8: Sexual slavery of civilians, a war crime, punishable pursuant to Article
22 8(2)(e)(vi), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or
23 28(a) in Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Kobu, Sangi, Buli, Jitchu and
24 Ngabuli.
25 Count 9: Sexual slavery of UPC/FPLC trial soldiers, a war crime, punishable
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1 pursuant to Article 8(2)(e)(vi), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(d)(i)
2 or (ii), or 28(a).
3 Count 10: Persecution on ethnic grounds, a crime against humanity, punishable
4 pursuant to 7(1)(h), as well as 25(3)(a) - direct perpetration and/or indirect
5 co-perpetration -- sorry, direct perpetration and/or indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b),
6 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or around Mongbwalu, Pluto,
7 Nzebi, Sayo and Kilo, and in the Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Kobu,
8 Sangi, Bambu, Lipri, Tsili, Ngongo, Jitchu, Buli, Nyangaray, Gutsi, Camp P.M., Djuba,
9 Katho, Gola, Mpetsi/Petsi, Avetso, Pili, Mindjo, Langa, Dyalo, Wadda, Goy, Dhepka,
10 Mbidjo, Thali and Ngabuli.
11 Count 11: Pillaging, a war crime, punishable pursuant to Article 8(2)(e)(v), as well as
12 25(3)(a) - direct perpetration and/or indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii),
13 or 28(a), in Mongbwalu and in the Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or around Mongbwalu
14 and Sayo. Pillaging, a war crime, punishable pursuant to Article 8(2)(e)(v), as well as
15 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in the
16 Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Bambu, Kobu, Lipri and Jitchu.
17 Count 12: Forcible transfer of population, a crime against humanity, punishable
18 pursuant to Articles 7(1)(d) as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b),
19 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in Mongbwalu and in the Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or
20 around Mongbwalu and Nzebi.
21 Forcible transfer of population, a crime against humanity, punishable pursuant to
22 Articles 7(1)(d), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a)
23 in the Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Lipri, Kobu, Bambu, Nyangaray, Tsili,
24 Buli, Jitchu and Gutsi.
25 Count 13: Displacement of civilians, a war crime, punishable pursuant to Articles
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1 8(2)(e)(viii), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or
2 28(a) in Mongbwalu and the Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or around Mongbwalu and
3 Nzebi.
4 Displacement of civilians, a war crime, punishable pursuant to Articles 8(2)(e)(viii), as
5 well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in the
6 Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Lipri, Kobu, Bambu, Nyangaray, Tsili, Buli,
7 Jitchu and Gutsi.
8 Count 14: Conscription of children under the age of 15, a war crime, punishable
9 pursuant to Article 8(2)(e)(vii), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(d)(i)
10 or (ii), or 28(a).
11 Count 15: Enlistment of children under the age of 15, a war crime, punishable
12 pursuant to Article 8(2)(e)(vii), 25(3)(a) - direct perpetration and/or indirect
13 co-perpetration, 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a).
14 Count 16: Use of children under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities, a
15 war crime, punishable to Article 8(2)(e)(vii), as well as 25(3)(a) - direct perpetration
16 and/or indirect co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a).
17 Count 17: Attacks against protected objects, a war crime, punishable pursuant to
18 Article 8(2)(e)(iv), as well as 25(3)(a) - direct perpetration and/or indirect
19 co-perpetration, 25(3)(b), 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in Mongbwalu and the
20 Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or around Mongbwalu and Sayo.
21 Attacks against protected objects, a war crime, punishable pursuant to Article
22 8(2)(e)(iv), as well as 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in the Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or
23 around Bambu.
24 Count 18: Destruction of property, a war crime, punishable pursuant to Article
25 8(2)(e)(xii), as well as 25(3)(a) - indirect co-perpetration 25(3)(d)(i) or (ii), or 28(a) in
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1 Banyali-Kilo collectivité, in or around Mongbwalu and Sayo and in the
2 Walendu-Djatsi collectivité, in or around Kobu, Lipri, Bambu, Camp P.M., Buli, Jitchu,
3 Djuba, Sangi, Tsili, Katho, Gola, Mpetsi/Petsi, Avetso, Nyangaray, Pili, Mindjo, Langa,
4 Dyalo, Wadda, Goy, Dhepka, Mbidjo, Thali and Ngabuli.
5 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much, court officer.
6 Now we move to taking the plea. And I have two questions in this regard to
7 Mr Bourgon: First one, Mr Bourgon, can you please confirm that you have explained
8 to Mr Ntaganda his right to plead either guilty or not guilty to the charges?
9 MR BOURGON: (Interpretation) Thank you, Mr President. I would like to
10 confirm that I have personally explained to Mr Bosco Ntaganda that he could plead
11 guilty or not guilty to those charges. Thank you.
12 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you. And my second question, Mr Bourgon:
13 I can ask your client to plead guilty or not guilty to each of 18 counts he is charged
14 with one by one, but if the position of your client is the same to each count then he
15 could be asked for his plea on all counts together, rather than to conduct the, I would
16 call it, fastidious exercise of reading them out separately and asking him 18 times.
17 So there are two alternatives, which of them do you prefer?
18 MR BOURGON: (Interpretation) Thank you, Mr President. Mr Bosco Ntaganda's
19 position is the same for the 18 charges, so I believe that the question should be put to
20 him for the entirety of all the charges. Thank you.
21 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much. So then Mr Bosco Ntaganda
22 please rise.
23 Mr Bosco Ntaganda, I am asking you, do you plead guilty or not guilty to each of
24 those 18 counts you are charged with?
25 MR NTAGANDA: (Interpretation) Mr President, I plead not guilty to all the
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1 charges.
2 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much. Mr Ntaganda, you may sit
3 down.
4 All right. It means that we will now turn to the opening statements. The Chamber
5 recalls that in its decision on the conduct of proceedings it decided that the
6 Prosecution would start, followed by the Legal Representatives for Victims and
7 finally by the Defence.
8 Before we start with the Prosecution, I would like to clarify that any materials that
9 will be shown today and tomorrow, such as videos, photos or maps, are shown
10 purely for the purposes of the opening statements and they are not at this time
11 entered into the case record or considered to be evidence.
12 So, Prosecution, you may now make your open statements.
13 Madam Prosecutor, you have the floor.
14 Sorry, I see Mr Bourgon. Mr Bourgon, you have the floor.
15 MR BOURGON: (Interpretation) Mr President, I do apologise for interrupting.
16 On this side of the courtroom, we have problems with the transcript, which is coming
17 out in blocks. I don't know if there is any way of checking the technology. I don't
18 know whether other people on the other side of the courtroom have the same
19 problem. I think that in order for us to make the most of the Prosecution's opening
20 statements, we need to have this technology checked over, please. Thank you.
21 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you for informing us.
22 First I would like to ask the left side of the courtroom, do you have the same
23 problems?
24 MS SAMSON: Apparently we do, your Honour, yes.
25 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Okay. Give me a minute. I will ask the court officer
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1 whether we -- what we can do with that.
2 So I was informed that hopefully the problem will be solved soon, so please be patient
3 and I guess that in a few minutes we will continue, in a few minutes we will
4 hopefully avoid these troubles.
5 So now again --
6 MR BOURGON: (Interpretation) Thank you very much, Mr President.
7 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: So now again, Madam Prosecutor, you have the floor.
8 MS BENSOUDA: Thank you, Mr President.
9 Mr President, your Honours, by February 2003, after months of intense ethnic fighting
10 between the Lendu and the Hema, the armed group known as the Union des Patriotes
11 Congolais or the UPC controlled much of the territory of Ituri in the Democratic
12 Republic of Congo.
13 As a result of the UPC's targeted attacks against them, the Lendu population fled their
14 homes to the surrounding forest. The UPC invited them to meet and talk about
15 peace.
16 Prosecution Witness P-106, a Lendu civilian, was apprehensive about the meeting,
17 about meeting the UPC. But still, he made his way to the meeting point, joining up
18 with other Lendu locals on the way. They went unarmed. It was a trap.
19 Arriving near the top of the hill for the meeting, this witness saw UPC militia forcing
20 Lendu people into a building and tying people together with rope. UPC soldiers
21 surrounded the witness and others, violently beating them with sticks. The witness
22 sprinted down the hill as the UPC militia shot after him. A man fleeing next to him
23 was shot and collapsed.
24 The witness survived. Searching for his family in the following days, he learned that
25 the UPC had kidnapped his wife and four children. When he heard that bodies of
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1 Lendu men, women and children lay in a banana field in the village of Kobu, he made
2 his way there on foot directly.
3 In Kobu, he saw a banana field where the trees had been cut. Amongst these trees
4 were many bodies. Like him, other people had come to look for their family
5 members. He searched through the dead bodies for a long time before discovering
6 his dead son, a toddler, disemboweled and his throat slit. He knew his wife had to
7 be close. He soon found her. She had the same wounds. He then found his infant
8 daughter, just seven months old, her head was punctured and her throat was slit.
9 Finally, he saw the bodies of his two remaining children. They had suffered the
10 same fate. He collected the lifeless bodies of his family. He brought them home
11 and buried them in a field by his house.
12 Another witness, P-805, a farmer, also saw the bodies in the banana field. He had
13 never seen a mass killing before. The first thing that caught his attention was how
14 the victims had been killed. Their heads had been beaten with a piece of wood and
15 their throats slit. He counted the bodies of 49 Lendu men, women and children.
16 They had cut the bellies of four or five of the women. They had slaughtered the
17 children. There was blood everywhere.
18 This trial, Mr President, is about Bosco Ntaganda's responsibility for the murder of
19 P-106's family and those in the banana field in Kobu and for the other 17 brutal crimes
20 for which he is charged. Bosco Ntaganda was the highest commander in charge of
21 operations and organisation. He planned and led operations. He coordinated
22 logistics, weapons and training for the UPC troops who carried out the crimes. He
23 gave orders to attack and kill. Bosco Ntaganda did not punish anybody for these
24 crimes. Instead, he praised the commander on the ground at the time of the killings,
25 Salumu Mulenda, calling him a real man.
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1 This trial is about Bosco Ntaganda's responsibility for the murder and attempted
2 murder, persecution, forcible transfer, rape, sexual slavery, destruction of property,
3 pillage, attacks against civilians and against protected objects committed against
4 Lendu, Ngiti and other non-Hema civilians in and around Mongbwalu in December
5 and November 2002 and in and around Kobu in February 2003; and for the
6 recruitment, use, rape and sexual slavery of children who were under 15 years of age.
7 This case is about the violence that decimated Ituri, leaving hundreds of civilians
8 dead, thousands living in the forest with nothing and a population devastated by
9 sexual violence.
10 My office received reports that Bosco Ntaganda continued to terrorize Eastern Congo
11 for a decade more through the UPC and other armed forces. This Court ordered his
12 arrest in 2006, which he evaded until his surrender in 2013.
13 Humanity demands justice for such crimes, justice for the people of the Democratic
14 Republic of Congo, justice for the innocent lives lost, ravaged and destroyed. It is
15 justice that must hold Bosco Ntaganda accountable for his acts.
16 Here in this courtroom the evidence will show that Bosco Ntaganda is guilty of the
17 crimes as charged. Bosco Ntaganda was a notorious and powerful military leader
18 with high command in the UPC. He, along with other senior leaders, seized control
19 of Ituri in mid-2002 to 2003.
20 Ituri has been described as one of the bloodiest corners of the Democratic Republic of
21 Congo. It is an area known for its abundant gold, diamonds and oil; a place where
22 its people should have been living their lives with their families and benefiting from
23 the riches of their homeland. Instead, it became a place where its people were
24 targeted, terrorized and abused. At least 5,000 civilians reportedly died in direct
25 ethnic violence in Ituri in the seven months between July 2002 and March of 2003
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1 alone.
2 Bosco Ntaganda and his armed group not only terrorized the civilian population, they
3 terrorized their own troops. They recruited and used hundreds of children under
4 the age of 15 to wage their bloody war. They forced these children to kill and treated
5 them cruelly. They also raped and sexually enslaved the girls. Rape and sexual
6 enslavement of its own soldiers was so prevalent in the UPC that these girls were
7 referred to as guduria -- this is a Swahili word for a large communal cooking
8 pot -- reduced to objects which soldiers and commanders could pass around and use
9 for sex whenever they pleased.
10 He and other UPC leaders, including Thomas Lubanga and Floribert Kisembo, united
11 in a plan to control Ituri and they systematically expanded their power in the region.
12 By controlling Ituri, they would not only have significant military and political reach,
13 they would also gain enormous economic power. Power meant to the benefit -- to
14 benefit the Hema community. Money meant to benefit Bosco Ntaganda personally.
15 The Lendu, Ngiti and non-Iturian civilian population who occupied desirable land
16 stood in the way of this plan. Bosco Ntaganda and those who joined him sought to
17 drive out the population to gain control of the territory, and he ensured that they
18 could not and did not return.
19 Your Honours, the evidence will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the crimes for
20 which Bosco Ntaganda is charged occurred within the context of a non-international
21 armed conflict that ravaged Ituri for more than one year. The evidence will also
22 show that the crimes occurred during a widespread or systematic attack against a
23 civilian population covering a large territory and harming a large number of civilians.
24 The crimes were not random, isolated or spontaneous. They were part of a carefully
25 planned, coordinated and executed campaign of violence, deliberately targeting the
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1 Lendu and Ngiti civilian populations and other non-Hema ethnic groups.
2 Bosco Ntaganda personally committed crimes. He also made an essential
3 contribution to a common plan to assume military and political control of Ituri and
4 drive out their enemies. As one of the highest military commanders in the UPC, he
5 planned, he coordinated and commanded the two attacks of the November 2002 and
6 February 2003 with Floribert Kisembo and other top UPC military leaders, militia
7 leaders. He recruited, trained and organised the army. He procured and
8 distributed weapons and ammunition. He ensured compliance with orders. He
9 developed the group's communication ability. He issued orders to attack, pillage,
10 rape, persecute and kill or induce the commission of crimes. He and the other
11 co-perpetrators acted in a common purpose to commit the crimes.
12 Not only did Bosco Ntaganda directly or jointly commit crimes, he also failed to
13 prevent or punish the crimes committed by the troops under his effective command
14 and control.
15 He was deputy chief of staff in charge of cooperation -- operations and organisations,
16 and he also exercised extensive de facto powers. His orders were executed
17 automatically. The evidence will show that he knew, or should have known, that his
18 troops were committing, or were about to commit crimes. These were the same
19 troops that had committed crimes in other attacks and using the same brutal tactics.
20 Mr President, your Honours, you will hear from many witnesses during the course of
21 this trial. Some of these witnesses have reported alleged attempts to interfere with
22 them to end their cooperation with the Prosecution. We have taken and continue to
23 take measures to address this.
24 Let me caution those individuals behind alleged attempts to intimidate ICC witnesses.
25 These are serious offences under the national laws of States Parties. These are
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1 serious offences under the Rome Statute of this Court. This trial must proceed
2 without interference with either the Prosecution or the Defence witnesses.
3 Lastly, Mr President, you will hear repeatedly throughout the trial about the ethnic
4 conflict that pitted the Hema against the Lendu-Ngiti and other ethnic groups. You
5 will hear evidence that the UPC was a Hema militia, created by and for the Hema
6 population of Ituri.
7 It is important to acknowledge here that both sides to the conflict, the Hema and the
8 Lendu, as well as the other ethnic groups, perpetrated acts and suffered as victims
9 during the conflict. Atrocities were committed by all sides, and the militias in the
10 area exploited ethnic divides to satisfy their greed.
11 Let me be clear: This trial is not a trial of the Hema people. It is not about
12 vindicating or indicting an ethnic group. Indeed, my office has equally prosecuted
13 crimes committed against the Hema victims.
14 (Interpretation) I would like to specify once again that the trial that is about to
15 commence is not a trial against one or other community. It is not a trial about ethnic
16 origin or an ethnic group. It is the trial of a certain individual, Bosco Ntaganda, who
17 made the most of the ethnic tensions in Ituri to pursue his personal agenda, accede to
18 power and make a fortune by committing atrocities.
19 (Speaks English) This trial is about his individual criminal responsibility for murder
20 and attempted murder, pillaging, attacks against civilians, attacks against protected
21 objects, destruction of property, rape and sexual slavery, persecution, forcible transfer
22 of a civilian population, and significantly, the enlistment and conscription and use of
23 children under the age of 15 and their rape and sexual slavery.
24 This case, Mr President, is about the thousands of victims of his crimes who must
25 finally have justice. They deserve no less. The evidence will prove that Bosco
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1 Ntaganda is guilty of the crimes as charged.
2 Mr President, your Honours, my learned colleague, Nicole Samson, the senior trial
3 lawyer of the case, will now present the context in which the crimes were committed
4 in a more detailed outline of the evidence supporting the charges. I thank you,
5 Mr President, your Honours.
6 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you, Ms Bensouda.
7 And one comment to Ms Samson. Ms Samson, please take into account that we
8 should break around 11 o'clock, so please arrange your speech accordingly. Thank
9 you.
10 (Pause in proceedings)
11 You may proceed.
12 MS SAMSON: Thank you. Mr President, your Honours, I will now present a more
13 in-depth explanation of the Prosecution's case and how we intend to prove it.
14 Bosco Ntaganda is charged with 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity
15 committed in 2002 and 2003 in Ituri.
16 Thirteen of these charges, as you can see on your screens, relate to violence committed
17 during two separate but related attacks: The first in and around Mongbwalu and
18 four neighbouring villages in the Banyali-Kilo collectivité in November and
19 December 2002; and the second in and around Lipri, Bambu, Kobu and 23
20 neighbouring villages in the Walendu-Djatsi collectivité in February 2003.
21 Five of the charges relate to the enlistment and conscription of children under the age
22 of 15 into the armed wing of the UPC, their use to participate actively in hostilities
23 and their rape and sexual slavery, between 6 August 2002 and the end of
24 December 2003.
25 The crimes charged occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the province of
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1 Ituri. Ituri lies in the northeast of the DRC bordering Uganda. Rwanda is southeast
2 of Ituri. The capital of Ituri is Bunia. Ituri is divided into five territories, Mambasa,
3 Irumu, Djugu, Mahagi and Aru. Each of the five territories is further subdivided
4 into collectivités. To give your Honours a sense of the size of Ituri, it's over
5 65,000 square kilometres. That's roughly the size of The Netherlands and Belgium
6 put together.
7 As you can see on your screens, the two main attacks at the centre of this case took
8 place in the Djugu territory. The charges related to children in the UPC are not
9 restricted to a set area. These crimes occurred throughout Ituri and throughout the
10 period of the charges.
11 In 2002 and 2003, Ituri had up to five and a half million residents from 18 ethnic
12 group. Amongst the largest ethnic groups were the Lendu, and the Lendu south,
13 known as Ngiti, the Hema, divided into Hema south and Hema north, the Hema
14 north also known as Gegere, the Alur and the Bira. The Lendu, Ngiti, Hema and
15 Bira communities resided principally in the Irumu and Djugu territories. The Alur
16 resided mainly in Mahagi. These statistics are largely the same today. You will
17 hear that ethnic groups considered not to be indigenous to Ituri were known as
18 non-originaires or Djajambo, such as the Nande ethnic group.
19 The two charged attacks occurred within a series of attacks launched by the UPC
20 between August 2002 and May 2003. The attacks also occurred in the context of a
21 non-international armed conflict that spanned more than one year and was marked
22 by periods of intensity.
23 On your screen is a map that will plot some of the main UPC attacks in this period.
24 Witnesses and documents will describe the UPC assaults against Bunia and Songolo
25 in August 2002, Zumbe in October 2002, Mambasa/Komanda and Eringeti starting in
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1 October 2002, Mongbwalu and surrounding areas in November 2002, Lipri, Bambu,
2 Kobu and surrounding areas in February 2003, and Bunia in March and again in
3 May 2003.
4 There were also Lendu-Ngiti militia offensives in Ituri that show the protracted
5 nature of the armed conflict.
6 Despite the ceasefire agreements in March and May 2003, by December 2003 there
7 were still no peaceful settlement. The fact that MONUC was given a Chapter VII
8 mandate by UN Security Council on 28 July 2003 authorising it to use all necessary
9 means to fulfil its mandate in the Ituri district is itself evidence of the ongoing nature
10 of this conflict after June 2003. This MONUC mandate was extended again on
11 1 October 2004 and authorisation was given by the Security Council to increase
12 personnel by 5,900 because the situation in Ituri continued to constitute a threat to
13 international peace and security in the region.
14 In the relevant period, various organised armed groups participated in the conflict in
15 Ituri and had the ability to carry out protracted armed violence.
16 These groups included the UPC, viewed as a Hema militia. The UPC, as you can see
17 on your screens, stands for Union des Patriotes Congolais. Its armed wing was
18 called the FPLC, or Forces Patriotiques pour la Libération du Congo. I will refer to
19 both the UPC and the FPLC interchangeably during my presentation.
20 The UPC's traditional enemies were the Lendu and Ngiti militia known by the end of
21 2002 as the FNI, Front des Nationalistes et Intégrationnistes and the FRPI, Front de
22 Résistance Patriotique de l'Ituri. The UPC's other key enemy, closely allied to the
23 Lendu-Ngiti militias, was the RCD-K/ML, Rassembelement Congolais pour la
24 démocratie Kisangani - movement de libération, and its military wing the APC,
25 Armée du Peuple Congolais.
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1 Other armed groups engaged in the conflict included PUSIC, Parti pour l'unité et la
2 sauvegarde de l'intégrité du Congo, another largely Hema militia group formed by
3 Chief Kahwa in early 2003 and another group, the FAPC, Forces Armées du Peuple
4 Congolais, led by Jérôme Kakwavu. Prior to creating his own militia, Kakwavu and
5 his forces briefly joined the UPC at the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003.
6 The armed conflict in Ituri was non-international, even though Rwanda, Uganda and
7 the DRC were involved in the conflict at different times. There were no direct or
8 indirect state-on-state hostilities as no state had overall control over any of these
9 armed groups.
10 The crimes charged were widespread and systematic. They covered a significant
11 geographical spread and temporal scope. The evidence will show that these were
12 not incidents of spontaneous violence. Rather, they were the result of careful
13 planning. Nor was the violence random.
14 The fact that there was a systematic attack was well known. In July 2003, the UN
15 Security Council extended MONUC's mandate and authorised the use of force
16 through resolution 1493, in which the UN, and I quote: "Strongly condemns the acts
17 of violence systematically perpetrated against civilians, including the massacres, as
18 well as other atrocities and violations of international humanitarian law and human
19 rights, in particular, sexual violence against women and girls."
20 And "Strongly condemns the continued recruitment and use of children in the
21 hostilities in the DRC, especially in north Kivu and Ituri." End of quote.
22 All of the UPC attacks followed a regular pattern. The UPC targeted villages with a
23 predominantly non-Hema civilian population, such as in Songolo, Zumbe, Lipri,
24 Bambu and Kobu. Places such as Komanda, Mambasa, Eringeti and Bunia had a
25 mixed ethnic population. There, UPC forces targeted the Lendu and non-originaires.
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1 They identified and hunted down the non-Hema civilians in so-called ratissage or
2 manhunt operations.
3 Another regular feature of the attacks was to surround villages to prevent escape.
4 During the assaults on Bunia, Songolo, Zumbe, Mongbwalu, Lipri, Bambu and Kobu,
5 the UPC closed off exit routes, shot at fleeing civilians and set up roadblocks to
6 capture, rape or kill non-Hema civilians.
7 The UPC also used heavy weapons, indiscriminately shelling and deliberately
8 targeting civilians. They also used bladed weapons to attack and kill civilians. The
9 UPC burned villages, pillaged and destroyed buildings, such as hospitals and health
10 centres.
11 Sexual violence was used as a tool to persecute non-Hema civilians and as a reward
12 for the UPC troops. In many instances, civilians returning to their villages were
13 killed.
14 The violence was not only systematic, it was also widespread. The campaign of
15 violence was long with a large number of victims.
16 Your Honours will hear witnesses from within Bosco Ntaganda's militia, as well as
17 many victims, describe the UPC's discriminatory policy and practice against the
18 Lendu, Ngiti non-originaires and other non-Hema populations. Contemporaneous
19 reports by MONUC's human rights investigators documented these policies. And I
20 quote from one of them: "When the Hema militia UPC took over Bunia, first in
21 August 2002 and again in May 2003, they adopted an ethnic cleansing policy, to
22 empty the town of its Lendu and Bira populations as well as the non-Iturian Nande
23 community, which was a commercial rival to the Hema businessmen," end quote.
24 The same UN human rights investigators further concluded, and I quote: "UPC
25 forces shelled hundreds of Lendu villages without making any distinction between
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1 armed combatants and civilians... Each time they took control of Bunia, August 2002
2 and May 2003, UPC forces conducted a manhunt for Lendu, Bira, Nande and
3 non-Iturians whom they considered opponents... UPC soldiers also committed
4 large-scale rape in the different areas of the town, sometimes abusing girls as young
5 as 12," end quote.
6 The UN estimated that due to the violence in Ituri by all sides, I quote, "Some 8,000
7 civilians lost their lives as a result of deliberate killing or indiscriminate use of force
8 from January 2002 to December 2003. More than 600,000 have been forced to flee
9 their homes," end quote.
10 The Prosecution alleges that one of the men most responsible for these crimes is
11 Commander Bosco Ntaganda, the operational brain of the armed group. He was a
12 top military commander in the UPC/FPLC whose military experience distinguished
13 him. He was feared amongst his troops. Witnesses describe him as merciless. A
14 Rwandan Tutsi and Congolese national, Bosco Ntaganda trained and served in
15 military groups in both Rwanda and the Congo going back to the early 1990s. He
16 was also a military instructor. By September 2002, Commander Ntaganda was
17 officially the deputy chief of staff of the UPC, but with such extensive de facto power
18 that you will see that he himself and others, including Thomas Lubanga, refer to him
19 as the chief of staff.
20 By the end of 2003 he officially was the chief of staff. From 2006 to his surrender to
21 the ICC in 2013, he was a top military commander in rebel groups in eastern Congo
22 and was a general in the Congolese national army.
23 How did he rise to power? In order to understand the accused's motive and
24 opportunity to commit the crimes charged it's necessary to give your Honours some
25 context. This context will be provided through the evidence of, amongst others, the
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1 expert witness on context, P-931, and by witnesses who have direct knowledge of the
2 events in question, because they lived through them. This includes witnesses such
3 as P-901, P-190, P-67 and P-12.
4 Land, your Honours, was a contested issue in Ituri. Beginning in 1999, ethnic
5 tensions between the Hema and the Lendu and competition for land and resources
6 escalated and turned violent. In a bid to gain territory, each side deliberately
7 targeted the civilians of the other side.
8 By 2002, this ethnic violence had further intensified. In the course of conquering
9 territory in 2002 and 2003, Bosco Ntaganda's forces killed countless Lendu, Ngiti and
10 other non-Hema civilians and forced thousands away from their homes.
11 You will hear that the goal to take control of Ituri and to drive out the Lendu, Ngiti
12 and other non-Hema populations was reflected in Bosco Ntaganda's orders during
13 military operations and by his own words and conduct.
14 Witnesses will tell you what he said, that the Lendu were the enemy, that they needed
15 to eliminate them, make them disappear and chase them away from the land they
16 were occupying. This goal was also reflected in the attacks themselves and in the
17 killings and ousting of large numbers of the non-Hema civilian population.
18 The accused was one of the most senior military leaders shaping and implementing
19 these UPC goals. He was in charge of the operation and organisation of the armed
20 group, the FPLC. He planned attacks, directly participated in them, commanded his
21 troops to commit crimes and he personally committed crimes himself.
22 You will hear from witnesses who saw Bosco Ntaganda personally attacking and
23 killing civilians, pillaging their goods, attacking hospitals and churches, persecuting
24 Lendu and non-Hema civilians and enlisting children under 15 and using them in
25 battle and in his escort.
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1 During the course of this trial you will hear about those whom Bosco Ntaganda
2 shared the objective to take control of Ituri and drive out the Lendu and non-Hema
3 civilian populations. As early as the summer of 2000, they mutinied from the armed
4 wing of the rebel group controlling Ituri and resolved to form their own group to
5 protect the interests of the Hema community. They united their skills and resources
6 to execute the common plan.
7 Although Bosco Ntaganda was not Hema, an alliance between Hema and Tutsi was
8 not unusual. One witness describes them as sharing common strains of ancestry.
9 The alliance included: Thomas Lubanga, a Hema and well-educated man. He
10 became the spokesperson for the officers who mutinied from the armed wing of the
11 rebel group in Ituri in 2000. He was president of the UPC from its creation on
12 15 September 2000. By September 2002, he added commander in chief of the FPLC
13 to his title.
14 Floribert Kisembo Bahemuka, Hema, and one of the mutineers. He later became the
15 UPC/FPLC chief of staff from early September 2002 to December 2003. Prior to that
16 time he was subordinate to Bosco Ntaganda.
17 Commander Kisembo helped plan the attack on the Walendu-Djatsi collectivité in
18 February 2003 and he communicated with troops on the ground from his base in
19 Mongbwalu. In December 2003 he formed his own armed group. Floribert
20 Kisembo is deceased.
21 Aimable Musanganya Saba, known as Rafiki. A Congolese Tutsi trader who acted
22 as a fixer for the mutineers in 2000 supplying them with food, batteries for their
23 radios and other logistics. In 2002 he became the UPC chief of security.
24 Commander Kasangaki, a Hema and one of the mutineers, in 2002 he became a senior
25 UPC commander in charge of operations in Commander Salumu Mulenda's brigade.
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1 Commander Kasangaki fought in UPC attacks, including the Mongbwalu attack in
2 November 2002. He helped plan the attack on Lipri, Bambu, Kobu and surrounding
3 villages in February 2003. He is deceased.
4 Commander Tchaligonza, a Hema, a mutineer, in 2002 he was second in command of
5 the UPC's southeast sector. He helped plan the Walendu-Djatsi attack in
6 February 2003 and commanded troops on the ground.
7 Commander Bagonza, a Hema, a mutineer, he became a senior UPC commander who
8 fought for the UPC in Songolo. He was killed in December 2002.
9 And lastly, Commander Salumu Mulenda. Commander Mulenda, one of the only
10 senior FPLC commanders who was neither Hema nor Tutsi, fought and lead troops in
11 the attacks on Mongbwalu in November 2002, in Walendu-Djatsi in February 2003
12 and in Bunia in March 2003. Troops under his direct command massacred unarmed
13 men, women and children in the banana field in Kobu. Commander Mulenda is
14 deceased.
15 In the summer of 2000, Bosco Ntaganda had also formed an alliance with Chief
16 Kahwa, an important Hema customary chief of the village of Mandro. Chief Kahwa
17 did not have a military background, but he was instrumental in obtaining weapons
18 for the UPC in June 2002 and in providing land for a UPC military training camp in
19 Mandro which was to become the UPC's largest military camp and weapons depot.
20 In September 2002, Chief Kahwa was appointed the UPC vice national secretary of
21 defence, a position he held for only a short time due to irreconcilable differences
22 about UPC's discriminatory policies. Thomas Lubanga officially expelled Chief
23 Kahwa from the UPC in December 2002. In early 2003, Chief Kahwa formed the
24 armed group PUSIC.
25 On your screens is a photograph of some of the main co-perpetrators taken in 2000,
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1 including Bosco Ntaganda in the centre, Thomas Lubanga, Floribert Kisembo, Rafiki
2 and Thomas Kasangaki. They were frequently together as you will see in other
3 photographs and videos.
4 From at least mid-2002 to 2003, the UPC was an organised armed group. It had an
5 established political and military structure, a large complement of trained soldiers,
6 means of communication and transport, weapons, ammunition and financing.
7 Let us look at the UPC/FPLC structure in November 2002. Thomas Lubanga is the
8 president and commander in chief. To the left is the UPC political executive.
9 Under Thomas Lubanga is chief of staff, Floribert Kisembo. In the centre of the
10 diagram is Bosco Ntaganda, the deputy chief of staff in charge of operations and
11 organisation. Below him are the five branches of the general staff: G1
12 administration, G2 intelligence, G3 operations, G4 logistics and G5 the political
13 commissioner. Under Bosco Ntaganda are the southeast and northeast sectors and
14 their brigades.
15 Let me turn briefly to the nature of the evidence and the witnesses.
16 You will hear from over 80 witnesses, including insiders who worked directly with
17 Commander Ntaganda. Their testimony confirms his control over the group and his
18 control of events, his orders, his influence, his knowledge and his intent.
19 You will hear from representatives of international organisations who documented
20 events and tried to address the commission of crimes with the UPC president and his
21 staff to no avail. And you will hear accounts of the crimes from many of the victims
22 themselves.
23 For example, you will hear from witnesses who describe how UPC soldiers targeted
24 Lendu and killed them, screening them by language and by their spiritual bracelets or
25 necklaces. Witnesses will tell you of the bodies of Lendu civilians seen in the bush,
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1 the roads or in fields bearing machete or gunshot wounds. You will hear how UPC
2 soldiers invaded the villages with the boom of shells and cascades of bullets and how
3 civilians fled with only the clothes on their back, how UPC militia killed elderly or
4 disabled persons who were too slow to escape.
5 You will hear witnesses describe how people returning to their homes were killed.
6 Those who made it back home alive found their homes emptied. Metal sheeted
7 roofs were ripped from village huts. You will hear how UPC captured civilians and
8 forced them to carry jugs of water, heavy bags or other pillaged goods long distances
9 at gunpoint.
10 You will hear witnesses describe some UPC militia as children who wore
11 camouflaged uniforms folded up to fit their shorter limbs and how some of these
12 children dragged rifles because they weren't strong enough to carry the loaded
13 weapons.
14 You will also hear how UPC soldiers captured women and girls, beating and raping
15 them in turns. How UPC detained people at will. You will hear about how some
16 managed to escape from the UPC militia by playing dead. You will hear how people
17 fled from the gunfire into the cover of the forest and how civilians were forced to live
18 like animals for weeks or months at a time, where disease and hunger killed. You
19 will hear how UPC soldiers would routinely run into the forest hunting for civilians
20 and shot at anyone they saw.
21 You will also hear of those who were not so fortunate, including the murder of
22 around 49 people in a banana field in Kobu, as referred to by the Prosecutor in her
23 opening address. Some witnesses will tell you how they buried these and many
24 other civilian bodies. You will hear of the injuries to those bodies, the state of
25 decomposition and that many people had to be buried in communal graves because
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1 there was no other way. And you will hear from forensic experts who examined
2 some of these remains in 2014.
3 The Prosecution will also call a number of experts on matters such as the context of
4 the armed conflict, the impact of trauma to a witness's account, the phenomena of
5 sexual violence and children in armed conflict, satellite imagery analysis and
6 exhumations.
7 Some of the evidence in this case, your Honours, will come from the
8 contemporaneous records of the group itself: Bosco Ntaganda's own radio
9 communications logbook; official UPC documents such as internal reports, requests,
10 orders, letters, decrees and statutes; photographs; videos of training camps where
11 children under the age of 15 were being trained; and videos taken shortly before and
12 after UPC attacks.
13 Some of the evidence will come from contemporaneous reports of the United Nations
14 and non-governmental organisations as well as from local media coverage of events.
15 This will include registers from a demobilisation centre that recorded the name and
16 age of each child who entered the centre and the armed group to which they
17 belonged.
18 I would like to pause briefly on one of the items of evidence I just mentioned: Bosco
19 Ntaganda's own radio communications logbook. This record attests to Commander
20 Ntaganda's prominent position in the UPC/FPLC. These radio communications
21 were transmitted through a high frequency or HF radio based permanently at his
22 residence in Bunia. The messages were handwritten in the logbook. On your
23 screens you can see the front cover of the logbook and here is an example of a page
24 from the logbook.
25 The logbook contains over 450 messages transmitted daily between November 2002
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1 and February 2003 as well as 76 verbal situation reports from the field.
2 Supplementary pages collected with the logbook contain close to 30 additional
3 messages and situation reports between October 2002 and June 2003.
4 Witnesses will testify that Bosco Ntaganda consulted this logbook every evening or as
5 soon as he returned from the field. The outgoing messages contained at the back of
6 the notebook were sent by UPC general staff members to subordinate UPC
7 commanders at the sector brigade and battalion levels. 80 percent of the outgoing
8 messages are from Commander Bosco Ntaganda. The incoming messages contained
9 at the front of the logbook were sent to the UPC general staff by subordinate
10 commanders. Bosco Ntaganda is the direct recipient of 22 percent of incoming
11 messages and copied on 41 percent.
12 The messages are written in French or Swahili. The word "passed" is written on
13 outgoing messages to indicate that the message was sent.
14 As witnesses will describe, the logbook records the radio messages using standard
15 military date and time group. This means that date and time information is
16 recorded at the top of each message in the following format: Date, time, time zone,
17 month and year. It is highlighted for ease of reference on your screen. And in that
18 example the date is 19, the time is 14:30, the time zone is B to represent the time zone
19 of Eastern Congo, the month is February and the year is 2003. Over 380 messages in
20 the logbook use this format. The remaining 76 verbal situation reports are presented
21 with the full time -- sorry, full date and location of reporting.
22 Commander Ntaganda is referred to in the logbook in several ways with slight
23 variations to his official title as you can see from the slide that is now visible on your
24 screen.
25 The logbook shows that Bosco Ntaganda issued orders to troops, informed
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1 subordinate commanders about promotions, implemented changes to the UPC
2 military structure, allocated ammunition and weapons and ordered or was informed
3 of disciplinary measures and troop deployment. The logbook also shows that he
4 communicated directly to the chief of staff, Kisembo, and to President Lubanga. The
5 logbook shows compliance with Bosco Ntaganda's orders. It gives a picture of the
6 daily operational military activities of the UPC. The testimony of various military
7 insider witnesses will corroborate the contents of the logbook.
8 Your Honours, this may be an appropriate moment to break for the -- to take the
9 break.
10 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much, Ms Samson, for your
11 punctuality. And for the sake of planning, do you have any idea or could you
12 kindly estimate what time you will need to complete your speech?
13 MS SAMSON: Yes, Mr President, I believe that we will go into the afternoon session,
14 but I don't think that we will need to run until 4 o'clock. I expect we could finish
15 between 3 and 3.30.
16 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much.
17 So now we will break for 30 minutes. It means we will resume at half past 11.
18 THE COURT USHER: All rise.
19 (Recess taken at 11.01 a.m.)
20 (Upon resuming in open session at 11.30 a.m.)
21 THE COURT USHER: All rise.
22 Please be seated.
23 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: So we will now proceed with the second part of
24 Prosecution opening statement, which is presented by Ms Samson.
25 So Ms Samson you have the floor, please.
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1 MS SAMSON: Thank you, Mr President.
2 Before I turn to the common plan and its implementation to drive out non-Hema
3 civilians when taking over Ituri, in the next section I'll first briefly explain the
4 evolution of the co-perpetrators' original military alliance into the political military
5 organisation, the UPC/FPLC.
6 The mutineers adopted a political agenda when Thomas Lubanga became their
7 spokesperson. As you can see on your screens, Thomas Lubanga and Rafiki, with
8 others, created the UPC on 15 September 2000.
9 During this time, the co-perpetrators sought to solidify their political military
10 alliances and training. They viewed the group controlling Ituri at that time, known
11 as the RCD-K/ML, as a group that favoured the Lendu and non-originaires, such as
12 the Nande over the Hema.
13 Indeed, on 17 April 2002, on your screens, Thomas Lubanga and other UPC members
14 issued a political declaration.
15 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you, Ms Samson, we resolved the problem.
16 You may proceed. Thank you.
17 MS SAMSON: I'll start that sentence again.
18 Indeed, on 17 April 2002, Thomas Lubanga and other UPC members issued a political
19 declaration in the name of the political managerial staff of Ituri, singling out the
20 Nande and their, I quote, "Machiavellian dream for domination and exploitation of
21 Ituri," end quote.
22 In the document, the group effectively call for RCD-K/ML's departure from the region
23 whose leader was Nande. They wanted Ituri for Iturians. This declaration of 17
24 April 2002 became a landmark document for the UPC. It was referred to in all
25 subsequent UPC decrees.
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1 In late April 2002, Thomas Lubanga presented himself as the head of the group in
2 meetings in Kasese, Uganda. The photograph on your screen shows Thomas
3 Lubanga's delegation taken during this meeting in April 2002. The delegation
4 included Bosco Ntaganda, Thomas Lubanga, Floribert Kisembo, Chef Kahwa, Jacques
5 Tchaligonza, Jean de Dieu Tinanzabo and others.
6 Within days of issuing the 17 April 2002 declaration, the very same individuals who
7 had orchestrated the first mutiny in 2000, namely, Bosco Ntaganda, Floribert Kisembo,
8 Tchaligonza, Kasangaki and Bagonza, organised a second revolt in 2002.
9 They set up their base in Mandro and took control of part of Bunia town with the
10 other part still under the control of the RCD-K/ML forces.
11 Between May and August 2002, Bosco Ntaganda and his men carried out large-scale
12 recruitment and training.
13 In June 2002, a UPC delegation met with Rwandan authorities to secure weapons and
14 ammunition.
15 In July 2002, the first shipment of weapons was delivered to the UPC's military camp
16 at Mandro.
17 Between 6 and 9 August 2002, the UPC with Ugandan forces attacked Bunia and
18 drove out the RCD-K/ML. During the takeover of Bunia, the evidence will show that
19 the UPC launched targeted attacks against the non-Hema civilian population
20 perceived to support the RCD-K/ML.
21 UPC leaders sought to disguise their true intentions, claiming that they wanted a
22 peaceful, multi-ethnic society. On 11 August 2002, two days after the takeover of
23 Bunia, Thomas Lubanga issued a declaration, as you can see on your screens,
24 asserting political, economic and military control of Ituri. This decree was referred
25 to as well as a foundational document in all subsequent UPC decrees.
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1 And this declaration revealed the co-perpetrators' aim to control the territory of Ituri.
2 It proclaimed the end of the RCD-K/ML's power in Ituri just as the 17 April
3 declaration calling for their departure had foreshadowed.
4 While it was signed by Thomas Lubanga and others in the name of the Front pour la
5 reconciliation et la paix, or FRP, Thomas Lubanga later referred to the takeover of
6 Bunia of 9 August 2002 as having been done as the UPC. After September 2002, the
7 UPC retained the suffix RP in official UPC documents.
8 In August 2002, the same month as the takeover of Bunia, a local newspaper called La
9 Colombe Plus published the photograph we saw earlier of the co-perpetrators
10 Thomas Lubanga, Bosco Ntaganda, Floribert Kisembo and others describing them as
11 the UPC forces. The article set out relevant UPC history starting with the mutiny,
12 Thomas Lubanga's role as the group's coordinator and Bosco Ntaganda and Floribert
13 Kisembo as operations directors of the attack.
14 I quote from the article in French: (Interpretation) "Thomas Lubanga was the civilian
15 coordinator. Commanders Bosco and Kisembo Bahemuka led the operations. The
16 UPC movement had already been set up in Bunia with its military core of mutineers
17 undergoing training in Uganda."
18 (Speaks English) The article also refers to the UPC as being publicly perceived as a
19 Hema political military movement fighting against the RCD-K/ML and its Lendu
20 allies.
21 In early September 2002, having taken control of Bunia, Thomas Lubanga appointed
22 the UPC's political executive. He appointed the governor and two vice-governors.
23 He appointed senior military officers, including Floribert Kisembo and Bosco
24 Ntaganda.
25 The UPC's attacks in the following months followed a consistent pattern of
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1 ethnic-based targeting, killing and abuse of non-Hema and widespread destruction.
2 In their effort to control Ituri and to drive out their enemies, the UPC targeted Lendu,
3 Ngiti and groups or persons supporting the Lendu and Ngiti or otherwise opposing
4 the UPC. The Prosecution will call witnesses, including Witness P-894, who will
5 describe how the UPC first targeted the Lendu and then the Djajambo, who the UPC
6 claimed were siding with the Lendu.
7 The evidence will also show that the UPC leadership had no genuine interest in
8 peaceful co-existence in Ituri. The UPC's early public statements about their desire
9 for a multi-ethnic society and government were a smokescreen. They attempted to
10 present the UPC as being for all Congolese, but the UPC leadership in fact considered
11 the Lendu as the enemy.
12 On the one hand, you will see videos in which UPC leaders, including Bosco
13 Ntaganda, Thomas Lubanga, Floribert Kisembo and Chef Kahwa, claim that the UPC
14 was multi-ethnic and claiming that the UPC was working to establish peace in the
15 region and seeking to protect all groups from harm. You will hear them claim that
16 they were not against the Lendu and that they told their troops not to rape.
17 On the other hand, you will hear witnesses say that Bosco Ntaganda himself talked
18 about the Lendu as the enemy and they heard it. You will see and hear Thomas
19 Lubanga give a speech in about April 2003 where he speaks of, and I quote,
20 (Interpretation) "These illiterate people who are not intelligent."
21 (Speaks English) You will also hear Thomas Lubanga give a speech on 12
22 January 2003 describing the conflict in Ituri as an inter-ethnic, political and tribal one
23 that was initiated by the Lendu.
24 Contrary to their so-called inclusive stance, the UPC acted for the benefit of the Hema.
25 You'll hear witnesses in this case confirm that the reality did not include any UPC
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1 desire for a unified and peaceful Ituri. The reality as the evidence will show was,
2 first, the UPC was predominantly Hema and it largely protected Hema interests.
3 The few Lendu or non-Hema in the UPC political leadership had very little or no
4 decision-making power. Their inclusion in the UPC was for show. Only the Tutsi
5 within the military had as much influence as the Hema.
6 Second, the UPC was viewed as an obstacle to peace by local civil society and the
7 international community. The peaceful discourse contained in some official UPC
8 documents was contradicted by the systematic targeting of non-Hema civilians and
9 by the UPC leadership's refusal to engage with the peace initiatives at the time, most
10 significantly the Ituri Pacification Commission.
11 Third and crucially, the UPC and Bosco Ntaganda deliberately targeted the Lendu
12 and non-Hema civilians. As the evidence will show, they also targeted perceived
13 supporters of the Lendu, including foreign priests and humanitarian aid workers.
14 In a radio communication on 2 January 2003, you can see on your screens that the
15 UPC commander of the northeast sector relays a message to the chief of staff, Floribert
16 Kisembo. In that message, the commander states that a white Catholic priest was in
17 communication with Lendu subjects. He states that the deputy chief of staff, a
18 reference to Bosco Ntaganda, was informed of this and authorised the arrest of the
19 priest, his transfer to Mahagi and the seizure of his communication device known as
20 phonie.
21 In another message a few weeks later, on 13 February 2003, Bosco Ntaganda orders
22 his brigade commander to immediately bring him the two communication devices
23 taken from the priest.
24 Again on the same day, 13 February 2003, Aimable Rafiki signs two official UPC
25 letters declaring two priests persona non grata within UPC controlled territory for
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1 secretly housing displaced persons and being in communication with negative forces.
2 Earlier, on 23 November 2002, Thomas Lubanga had ordered a representative of the
3 UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, to leave
4 UPC-controlled territory within 48 hours.
5 These orders show that the UPC targeted religious figures and humanitarian aid
6 workers whom they perceived as negative forces simply because they helped the
7 Lendu.
8 I will now describe the implementation of the common plan during the two main
9 attacks that are the subject of these charges. Afterwards I will describe the key
10 evidence of the charges related to children in the UPC/FPLC.
11 Bosco Ntaganda is charged with crimes committed in and around Mongbwalu and
12 four villages in the Banyali-Kilo collectivité in November and December 2002. He is
13 also charged with crimes committed during the attacks on Lipri, Bambu, Kobu and no
14 less than 23 surrounding locations within the Walendu-Djatsi collectivité in
15 February 2003.
16 By October 2002, as you can see on your screens, the UPC confirmed that it was a
17 political military movement since 15 September 2000 and asserted that since 9
18 August 2002, it had political, military and economic control of Ituri.
19 But the UPC did not yet control the rich mining town of Mongbwalu and its
20 neighbouring villages. At that time, Mongbwalu was a golden prize inhabited by
21 predominantly Lendu and other non-Hema populations and defended by Lendu
22 militia. This was the setting for the first attack for which Bosco Ntaganda is charged.
23 From on or about 20 November until on or about 6 December 2002, Bosco Ntaganda
24 led UPC forces in the attack on the Mongbwalu area. More than 200 civilians were
25 killed and thousands were displaced.
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1 Bosco Ntaganda was the overall commander of this operation. He planned the
2 attack. He fought on the battlefield. He gave orders to attack and kill civilians, to
3 forcibly transfer the population, to rape, to pillage, and to attack churches and
4 hospitals. His orders were executed automatically. And he committed crimes
5 himself. He led his troops by example. He set the standard for what was accepted
6 and expected. This involved condoning his militia's persecution of non-Hema
7 civilians in this attack and other attacks, including in the Walendu-Djatsi collectivity a
8 few months later.
9 In the next two video clips that I will show you, your Honours will see that just three
10 days after the attack on Mongbwalu and surrounding areas in November 2002, Bosco
11 Ntaganda confirms that the UPC forces took control of Mongbwalu city. In the first
12 clip you'll see him at the Mongbwalu airstrip greeting other senior military
13 commanders, including Floribert Kisembo and Aimable Rafiki who arrive by
14 airplane.
15 In the second clip you see that the journalist addresses his questions to Commander
16 Ntaganda. When the journalist mistakenly describes him as a sector commander,
17 Commander Ntaganda corrects him saying, "I am not sector commander. I am chief
18 of staff of the UPC." Bosco Ntaganda confirms to the journalist that now that the
19 UPC is in control of Mongbwalu, there are no more problems and everything is fine.
20 (Viewing of video excerpt)
21 MS SAMSON: Let me now describe the background to the attack. On your screens
22 on the map of the area, you can see Mongbwalu, site of the richest goldfields in the
23 region. It's about 81 kilometres northwest of Bunia by road and about 45 kilometres
24 straight line distance.
25 For the UPC leadership, taking control of the area had several advantages. It meant
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1 accessing and exploiting the mineral resources that could fuel the war effort and
2 satisfy Bosco Ntaganda's greed. He told soldiers, "We have to take Mongbwalu
3 because it's good money."
4 It also meant that unpaid soldiers would be rewarded with war booty.
5 To control this town, Bosco Ntaganda had to oust the non-Hema civilian communities
6 and any combatant forces in the area. After Lendu combatants had attacked
7 Mongbwalu earlier in June of the same year, 2002, the Hema civilians had mostly fled
8 the town. It was therefore mainly inhabited by Lendu people, many of whom
9 worked in the mines.
10 Following an earlier failed attempt to take over Mongbwalu, Bosco Ntaganda
11 attacked Mongbwalu and neighbouring villages with two of his brigades around 20
12 November 2002.
13 Logged radio communications reveal the preparations for the attack.
14 On 19 November 2002, the morning before he went to Mabanga, Bosco Ntaganda
15 received reports from his subordinate commanders on troop position and weapons
16 supplies.
17 On the same day, and you can see on your screens, Bosco Ntaganda sends an order to
18 Commander Salumu Mulenda and Commander Seyi to advance to the objective. He
19 confirms that he will join them and deliver ammunition. Another message of the
20 logbook also shows that this order was executed.
21 Over the next several weeks, he and his troops attacked Pluto, Mongbwalu, Sayo,
22 Nzebi and Kilo. In each of these localities, Bosco Ntaganda and his troops
23 intentionally targeted the civilian population and destroyed property.
24 On your screens is a map from which you can follow the presentation on this attack.
25 The attack had been planned weeks earlier. In October 2002, Bosco Ntaganda flew
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1 several times to Aru town in the northernmost territory of Ituri to negotiate an
2 alliance with militia leader Jérôme Kakwavu. During those meetings, Bosco
3 Ntaganda set out attack strategy, supplied weapons and ammunition to Kakwavu's
4 troops and instructed them to attack Mongbwalu from the northern road leading
5 from Aru to Mongbwalu through the village of Pluto.
6 At the same time, Bosco Ntaganda's forces would attack from the south, coming from
7 Bunia through Mabanga, Dala and onto Mongbwalu and neighbouring villages.
8 In Mabanga, a location you can see on your screen, which is on the way to
9 Mongbwalu, Bosco Ntaganda held a pre-attack briefing for the troops. He ordered
10 his soldiers to kill everyone they encountered in Mongbwalu, orders he later repeated
11 throughout the assault. "All Lendu are enemies." And he used a Swahili term,
12 kupiga na kuchaji, meaning to charge and to pillage property and women alike.
13 Bosco Ntaganda told his soldiers, "All that you find there, it's for you."
14 His subordinate, Commander Mulenda, further encouraged the troops in Mabanga
15 telling them, "You are going to loot, you are going to have women." And these
16 orders were executed. Bosco Ntaganda's troops attacked, killed and pillaged, raped
17 and displaced, destroyed property and persecuted the population.
18 The first location they attacked was Pluto. On your screens it's a village from the
19 north. As the UPC advanced, the civilians who could escape fled south towards
20 Mongbwalu. As they were running for their lives they could see UPC soldiers
21 slaughtering those left behind too weak to escape.
22 The UPC troops in the north advanced to the centre of Mongbwalu as Bosco
23 Ntaganda arrived with other forces from the east. He deployed several heavy
24 weapons units, one under his direct command on the ground. These heavy weapons
25 units shelled houses in civilian areas using mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
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1 This means of warfare resulted in extensive and indiscriminate destruction of civilian
2 homes and buildings.
3 The UPC attack against the civilians caused the forcible transfer of the population out
4 of the area. Women, men and children fled from Mongbwalu south through the
5 bush to the Walendu-Djatsi area. Others escaped from Mongbwalu to Kilo, Sayo, or
6 Nzebi.
7 UPC soldiers who participated in this attack on Mongbwalu will describe how men,
8 women, children and the elderly were shot or decapitated with machetes, axes and
9 knives as the troops advanced in town. Many who could not flee were killed. The
10 UPC had also armed Hema civilians with machetes and knives. They too
11 participated in the assault and killed, pillaged and raped.
12 Reports and witnesses document at least 200 civilians killed by Bosco Ntaganda's
13 troops. By the end of the first day of the assault, the UPC had seized Camp Goli, on
14 your screens, a key observation point on a hill overlooking Mongbwalu town. Bosco
15 Ntaganda met with his military commanders to give his orders for the next day:
16 Strike and eliminate the enemy in the surrounding hills, whether Lendu combatant or
17 civilian. He instructed the young Hema civilians to exterminate the Lendu.
18 By the end of the second day, the UPC had also seized the airport and the rest of the
19 town, including the apartments that had been used to house the staff of the company
20 exploiting the gold mines. And UPC troops were also positioned in the hills
21 surrounding Mongbwalu.
22 The UPC conducted a manhunt or search operation, a term I've used before, ratissage.
23 Troops went house to house to identify civilians of Lendu ethnicity. They looked for
24 bracelets, necklaces and other distinctive clothing or accessories generally worn by
25 the Lendu. They asked people directly what their ethnicity was, looking for Lendu.
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1 In Mongbwalu, Bosco Ntaganda set up his base at the apartments. These apartments
2 were also strategically located on a hill overlooking the town. Bosco Ntaganda used
3 the apartments to detain, interrogate and kill captured combatants and civilians alike.
4 Detainees were sorted according to ethnicity, with Lendu as the enemy. Bosco
5 Ntaganda ordered the execution of Lendu civilians detained there.
6 In one particularly well-known incident, Bosco Ntaganda ordered the arrest of a
7 Lendu south Ngiti priest and nuns from Mongbwalu. The priest, whose name was
8 Abbé Boniface Bwanalonga, and the nuns were brought to the apartments. There,
9 Bosco Ntaganda interrogated the priest about his knowledge of certain documents.
10 When the priest denied knowing about these documents, Bosco Ntaganda became
11 angry.
12 He ordered his bodyguards to take priest Bwanalonga to the back of the Kilo-Moto
13 apartments. Bosco Ntaganda followed the captive priest hurling insults at him while
14 surrounded by militia members. Then, Bosco Ntaganda pointed his gun at priest
15 Bwanalonga. He shot him in the head and then shot him several more times in the
16 body.
17 Priest Bwanalonga died of these injuries. Bosco Ntaganda ordered his bodyguards
18 to throw the body into the bush. After the murder, Bosco Ntaganda repeated to
19 those present that the Lendu had to be eliminated.
20 The UPC also attacked protected objects in Mongbwalu, including health centres and
21 churches. They killed several people at the Mongbwalu hospital, including a retired
22 school principal with disabilities.
23 Bosco Ntaganda ordered the troops to plunder Mongbwalu, including the
24 Mongbwalu church which they then destroyed.
25 He tasked soldiers to pillage and bring the loot back to the apartments in a pillaged
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1 pickup truck.
2 The UPC systematically pillaged houses and shops, emptying them of their
3 belongings including bicycles, radios, generators, bags of beans, flour, chairs, sofas,
4 tables, mattresses, pots or sewing machines.
5 One witness will tell you that soldiers were ordered to keep records of items acquired.
6 UPC militia ransacked the hospital for medicine and equipment, some of which was
7 later spotted at Commander Ntaganda's residence.
8 Bosco Ntaganda's bodyguards were seen in Bunia unloading pillaged goods from
9 Mongbwalu into his Bunia residence. So many things were taken that Ntaganda
10 even arranged for several airplanes to transfer the load of goods to Bunia.
11 In the aftermath of the takeover, the UPC forces raped women during the daily
12 ratissage operations as part of the kupiga na kuchaji order, to charge and to pillage
13 property and women alike.
14 You will hear victims themselves describe how UPC troops routinely captured Lendu
15 women and young girls during patrols, took them to houses and gang-raped them.
16 One witness will describe how, as a young girl, she was abducted by UPC soldiers in
17 Mongbwalu and taken to a commander. The soldiers undressed her and beat her.
18 Two soldiers held her legs down while the commander raped her. They put a cloth
19 in her mouth to stifle her screams. The rape was so painful she felt that he tore her
20 body from inside out. She was crying and bleeding. Afterwards another soldier
21 raped her.
22 UPC soldiers also brought women back to the UPC camps to rape them, including at
23 the apartments where Bosco Ntaganda resided during the weeks that he remained in
24 Mongbwalu. By the third day of the attack, the UPC erected a roadblock on the road
25 to Kilo. They proceeded to attack Lendu civilians and combatants in Sayo and Nzebi
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1 as you can see on your screens.
2 UPC Commander Salongo in an official UPC decree acknowledged the massive
3 displacement of the Mongbwalu population. You can see this order on your screens.
4 On 10 December 2002 from Mongbwalu, Commander Salongo states that Mongbwalu
5 city was, in his words, liberated on 24 November 2002 leading to a period of disorder
6 and massive departure of the population.
7 On 25 November 2002, Bosco Ntaganda sent a message to the commander of the
8 northeast sector and to Floribert Kisembo confirming his position on the front in
9 Mongbwalu and giving instructions to attack the enemy in Ndrele, which is an area of
10 Mahagi.
11 You can see this message on your screens and I will read it in French, quote:
12 (Interpretation) "I would like for you to be able to request help for us to fight. At
13 this time I am in Mongbwalu at the front. Personally I would like for part of our
14 troops based in Mahagi to attack troops in Ndrele, until later, I expect an answer from
15 you." Signed Commander Bosco Ntaganda.
16 (Speaks English) In Mongbwalu Bosco Ntaganda is charged as a direct perpetrator
17 of the crimes of murder, pillaging, attacks against protected objects and persecution.
18 He's also charged for crimes committed by his troops, including attacks against
19 civilians, rape, forcible transfer, murder, pillaging, attacks against protected objects,
20 destruction of property and persecution.
21 Your Honours, the attack did not end there. After securing Mongbwalu, the UPC
22 advanced towards Sayo, a predominantly Lendu village where many people had fled
23 from Mongbwalu. Bosco Ntaganda led troops on the ground and he filmed the
24 attack. He and his troops systematically shelled the village. He ordered heavy
25 weapons operators to fire at fleeing civilians. This destroyed many houses and
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1 buildings and indiscriminately killed the fleeing population.
2 As they advanced on Sayo, UPC troops conducted house-to-house searches to seek
3 out the Lendu. Lendu civilians were captured and forced to dig graves for executed
4 Lendu prisoners. They themselves were then executed. Their bodies were also
5 thrown into latrines.
6 UPC soldiers attacked the Sayo health centre and killed those who couldn't flee.
7 Black pools of blood and cartridges were discovered after the assault, so were the
8 semi-buried remains of a woman and her child. Dozens more bodies in civilian
9 clothes were found with gunshot wounds and missing limbs in the health centre.
10 The troops pillaged the health centre of all its supplies, leaving the population
11 without resources to treat the wounded. You'll hear from witnesses who buried
12 many bodies outside the Sayo health centre.
13 Bosco Ntaganda also attacked the local church where people were taking refuge,
14 including the elderly. One of his bodyguards dragged a man out and shot him.
15 The rest were later killed. Bosco Ntaganda himself interrogated and executed a
16 retired colonel named Lusala. He also executed a man of Lulu ethnicity with mental
17 disabilities as well as three members of that man's family near the Sayo church.
18 UPC soldiers and Hema civilian supporters under Bosco Ntaganda's command
19 pillaged the corrugated iron from civilian dwellings, clothes and furniture and loaded
20 them onto vehicles. They raped women during the assault.
21 UPC soldiers set the straw houses on fire while some of the inhabitants were still
22 inside. Witnesses describe that the whole village was burning.
23 Your Honours, in January 2014, the Prosecution conducted exhumations in relation to
24 the two main attacks including in Sayo.
25 I'll now present a visual of Sayo, the village itself, which was taken for the purpose of
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1 the forensic mission. It will allow you to walk through Sayo village and see some of
2 the village landmarks that the witnesses will refer to, including the health centre, the
3 church and the exhumation sites.
4 Here is Sayo's main street and you can see the structures along it. On the right is the
5 Sayo health centre with a round white sign where dozens of people were killed. We
6 continue down the main street towards the school area and the church. This is the
7 school area. And we now get to an area where the Prosecution exhumed one grave
8 containing five bodies.
9 According to the findings of the experts who examined these remains, three of the
10 five victims were children. One was between two and four years old. Another was
11 between 7 and 11 years of age. The last was between 13 and 17 years old. Three of
12 the five victims had injuries consistent with gunshot wounds. These findings accord
13 with the witness accounts that these civilians were shot down by the UPC.
14 We now continue on the main road to the Sayo church. You can see the church in
15 the distance. This is the church where people were killed as I described earlier. On
16 the right of the church and behind it, you can look down into the town of Mongbwalu.
17 Further down, further down to the left of the church, experts exhumed another body.
18 Witnesses identified this location as being the gravesite of Colonel Lusala.
19 Coming back briefly to the five bodies that were exhumed in Sayo at the earlier grave
20 I mentioned with the five bodies in it, forensic experts retrieved a red shirt found on
21 one of the bodies. This shirt was cleaned. On it you can see multiple bullet holes.
22 In Sayo, Bosco Ntaganda is charged as a direct perpetrator of the crimes of attacks
23 against civilians, pillaging, attacks against protected objects and persecution. He's
24 also charged for crimes committed by his troops, including attacks against civilians,
25 rape, murder, pillaging, attacks against protected objects, property destruction and
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1 persecution.
2 After attacking the village of Sayo, Bosco Ntaganda attacked the village of Nzebi.
3 There he ordered his troops to fire on fleeing civilians. When two Lendu civilians
4 tried to return to their homes, Bosco Ntaganda ordered his bodyguards to kill them.
5 In Nzebi, Bosco Ntaganda is charged for the crimes committed by his troops,
6 including murder or attempted murder, forcible transfer and persecution.
7 Many non-Hema civilians had fled the Mongbwalu area to Kilo, as you can see on
8 your map about 18 kilometres south of Mongbwalu. On or about 6 December 2002,
9 the UPC attacked Kilo, further displacing civilians.
10 When UPC troops attacked, they engaged in another manhunt. They captured
11 Lendu men, women and children and ordered them to dig their own graves before
12 executing them. One Lendu woman who fled from Mongbwalu was captured by a
13 UPC soldier near Kilo market. She was beaten and put in a hole in the ground with
14 other non-Hema prisoners. UPC child soldiers ordered another prisoner to
15 penetrate her vagina with his hand. The soldiers laughed while she was being raped.
16 The next day, a UPC soldier slashed her neck and left her for dead in a pit with other
17 corpses.
18 Rape occurred on such a large scale in Kilo that the UPC delivered antibiotics to treat
19 their soldiers for venereal disease.
20 Radio logbook messages show that Bosco Ntaganda coordinated this operation and
21 received reports from the ground.
22 In Kilo Bosco Ntaganda is charged for the crimes committed by his troops, including
23 murder and attempted murder, rape and persecution.
24 I will now describe the key evidence of the second main attack.
25 Between on or about 12 February to 27 February 2003, Bosco Ntaganda's troops
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1 attacked at least 26 villages in the Walendu-Djatsi collectivity. Witnesses heard the
2 UPC shouting the phrase "chika na mukono" during the attack, a phrase which means
3 "to grab with bare hands." This phrase describes how civilians were captured.
4 They were caught with bare hands and killed with knifes, machetes or blunt objects.
5 The evidence will show that Commander Ntaganda as the UPC deputy chief of staff
6 in charge of operations and organisation retained full command of the troops
7 engaged in the attacks and closely followed the operations. He gave orders, he
8 received reports, and he coordinated the offensive through the radio.
9 When he was in Bunia, Commander Ntaganda was only about 30 kilometres away
10 from the field of operations. Commander Kisembo was based in Mongbwalu for
11 this attack, about 20 kilometres away from the area. Both commanders were in
12 contact with the troops by radio during the attack.
13 On your screens is a map. The villages attacked were in the Walendu-Djatsi
14 collectivity. As indicated by its name, Walendu, this is a Lendu territory between
15 Mongbwalu and Bunia. The map on your screens shows several of the villages in
16 this area identified in blue, but there are dozens more. The area is lush and
17 mountainous. From the village of Lipri, which is itself on a hill, you can see over the
18 valley towards Kobu and neighbouring villages. The straight-line distance between
19 Lipri and Kobu is about 14 kilometres.
20 By December 2002, both Mongbwalu and Bunia were controlled by the UPC and
21 connected by three dirt roads. One road ran from Bunia through Lipri and
22 Nyangaray. A longer route was through Mabanga. And you will recall that this
23 was the road taken by the UPC during its earlier attack on Mongbwalu, a route that
24 led through UPC controlled areas.
25 The road in the best condition though was the one that led through Bambu, Kobu and
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1 other Lendu villages. To ensure free and easy access to and from Mongbwalu, and
2 to protect from enemy attack, the UPC needed to control these roads. That meant
3 driving out the Lendu, both combatant and civilian, as the UPC considered all Lendu
4 to be their enemy.
5 This second attack focused on cleansing the area on or between the two roads that ran
6 through the Lendu territory of Walendu-Djatsi.
7 After the November 2002 attack in the Mongbwalu area, many Lendu and non-Hema
8 civilians had fled south to the traditionally Lendu inhabited Walendu-Djatsi
9 collectivity. These displaced civilians lived in extremely precarious conditions,
10 hiding in the forest for weeks, fearing further attacks. Indeed, after the attack, in and
11 around Mongbwalu, in November, December 2002, the UPC conducted several
12 smaller attacks on towns along the two roads connecting Mongbwalu and Bunia.
13 But in February 2003, the UPC intensified its operation to gain control of the main
14 roads between Mongbwalu and Bunia. In a meeting in Bunia, Bosco Ntaganda
15 planned the attack with Thomas Lubanga and Floribert Kisembo and others to
16 achieve the objective to remove the Lendu and non-Hema populations and clear the
17 roads so they could control the area.
18 Attacking from different directions, the UPC troops encircled and trapped the
19 population. On or about 18 February 2003, the UPC attacked Lipri and Tsele from
20 Bunia in the south, they attacked Kobu from Kilo in the northwest. The next day, the
21 UPC attacked Bambu, and by the third day it had reached Gutsi, burning all villages
22 along the way.
23 This next slide zooms into the area between the two roads. After the successful
24 takeover of the main villages in the area, which they took first, Lipri, Bambu, Kobu,
25 civilians were pushed further into the dense and hilly bush terrain in the centre. The
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1 UPC troops pursued them, closing in on Sangi, Buli, Jitchu and the many small
2 villages peppered throughout the surrounding forest area.
3 Attacking from different directions, UPC troops encircled and trapped the population.
4 During both the first and second waves of the attack, the UPC conducted ratissage
5 operations, patrolling the hills in a manhunt for Lendu. The UPC were ordered to
6 fire heavy weapons into the bush where civilians were hiding.
7 Caught between UPC positions, people had nowhere to escape. You will hear
8 witnesses describe their deplorable living conditions, lack of shelter, lack of food,
9 disease and constant fear of death.
10 I will now describe some of the crimes committed in these areas.
11 In Nyangaray, around 18 February 2003, the UPC troops and Hema civilian
12 supporters looted. Troops destroyed property and forcibly displaced hundreds of
13 people who fled to Lipri. They then continued to Lipri and burned down the village.
14 They also raped Lendu girls and women.
15 On the same day in Kobu, UPC and Hema civilian supporters looted sheet metal
16 roofing and burned houses and fields. Homes were destroyed. The only houses
17 left intact were the ones used by the UPC soldiers. After the takeover, Commander
18 Mulenda and his unit established its base in Kobu.
19 The following day, around 19 February 2003, the UPC attacked Bambu with heavy
20 weapons. Soldiers and Hema civilian supporters again took the metal roofing from
21 homes. They looted the town, including the offices of Kilo-Moto mining company,
22 orphanages, schools, religious structures and homes.
23 UPC forces attacked Bambu hospital, the biggest in the region. They took medicine
24 and medical supplies. Doctors fled, leaving their patients unattended and came back
25 to find them dead.
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1 UN human rights investigators who were on site a few weeks after the events will
2 testify that the hospital had been totally emptied and destroyed. Lendu women
3 were raped and murdered.
4 Soldiers rounded up villagers attempting to flee and murdered them. The UPC
5 troops then burned down Bambu. Part of this destruction was captured by satellite
6 imagery, which I will show you on your screen.
7 On the first picture, taken less than a month before the attack, you can see multiple
8 structures. In the second photo taken three months after the attack, many structures
9 are either roofless or completely destroyed as you can see by the arrows.
10 Because it's difficult to appreciate the satellite imagery before we get the benefit of the
11 expert, we will zoom in on two areas that show the before image on the left and the
12 after image on the right.
13 The image on the left shows the houses before they were destroyed. The images on
14 the right show that the roofs were removed. And you can now see inside the
15 structure. And here is a second example.
16 In her presentation, the Prosecutor described a brutal massacre of some 49 people in a
17 banana field in Kobu. I will now provide greater detail about this massacre.
18 Around 22 February 2003, Commander Mulenda invited the Lendu community,
19 which was hiding between Buli, Gutsi and Jitchu to a so-called pacification meeting.
20 The UPC wanted the Lendu to return a heavy weapon captured during a previous
21 battle.
22 The invitation was delivered to those in the forest by various means, including by
23 letter to the Lendu population.
24 Around 25 February 2003, in response to the invitation, a delegation of Lendu leaders,
25 civilians and unarmed combatants went to discuss peace. When they arrived in
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1 Sangi, UPC soldiers attacked and beat them, killing some immediately and
2 imprisoning the rest. Soldiers told the detained women that they would rape them
3 to death. UPC soldiers gang-raped victims at gunpoint, beat them and terrorized
4 them. The UPC raped and killed many women, some only survived because they
5 were left for dead.
6 On the same day as this meeting, the UPC troops also attacked Buli, Jitchu, Gola,
7 Gogo and the surrounding forests. The troops killed up to 92 displaced people in
8 Jitchu forest.
9 The UPC ransacked the locations they attacked. They captured civilians to carry
10 looted goods from Jitchu, Sangi or Buli to their base in Kobu.
11 By nighttime the troops had set fire to the villages of Sangi, Buli, Pili, Jitchu, Mindjo,
12 Goy, Langa, Dyalo and Wadda. Even the forest was set on fire. Everything was
13 burning.
14 The next day, around 26 February 2003, UPC troops brought the Lendu prisoners
15 from Sangi to their base in Kobu.
16 There, UPC soldiers raped and sexually enslaved the civilians. They forced them to
17 cook and to carry looted goods. The UPC soldiers could rape them whenever they
18 wanted, individual or gang rapes, sometimes in front of other detainees, on the road
19 to another village, in commanders' rooms. UPC soldiers exploited these civilians at
20 will. They took them to other locations and they killed some of them.
21 Indeed, witnesses will describe how Commanders Mulenda, Linganga and Simba
22 raped.
23 UPC commanders and soldiers massacred Lendu prisoners in a banana field behind a
24 hotel known as Hôtel Paradiso, including some of the prisoners who had gone to the
25 Sangi pacification meeting. They were killed simply because they were Lendu.
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1 The UPC troops left Kobu on or about 27 February 2003 to return to Bunia as the UPC
2 was preparing another attack there. Some of the women prisoners were kept as sex
3 slaves and forced to follow the UPC and carry looted goods.
4 After the UPC soldiers left Kobu, the Lendu population slowly came out of their
5 hiding places and discovered the massacre site at the banana field.
6 Men, women and children lay on the ground. Many were tied up and partially
7 naked. Some victims had been disemboweled. Others had their throat slit. Many
8 had machete wounds on their bodies or smashed skulls.
9 Your Honours, photographs were taken at the banana field site that morning. I will
10 show three of them. I caution those watching that the photographs contain graphic
11 and disturbing images.
12 The first photograph depicts the bodies as they were found in the banana field and
13 some of the villagers who found them. You can see that trees were cut down and
14 that many prisoners had their arms tied behind their backs and that many had their
15 throats slit.
16 In the next photograph you can see two bodies. In the background, a women lying
17 on her back is visible. Her throat is slit and she was disemboweled.
18 On the last image, part of a second image is superimposed over the first one, meaning
19 that a second photograph was taken on the same negative, but you can still clearly see
20 a child lying dead among the leaves.
21 Witnesses will testify that Lendu leaders as well as other civilians captured at this
22 sham pacification meeting were among the corpses in the banana field. Families
23 came to claim their dead relatives and bury them in their village of origin. Those
24 bodies that were not claimed by family members were buried in the banana field at
25 Kobu. Indeed, few bodies were buried in Kobu because many were identified and
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1 taken for burial elsewhere.
2 The Prosecution conducted exhumations of the burial site in Kobu in 2014. As I did
3 with the village of Sayo, I will now play a video that shows the exhumation sites and
4 a bit of the village of Kobu.
5 (Viewing of video excerpt)
6 MS SAMSON: Here we see the Hôtel Paradiso near the massacre site.
7 We next move to the banana field and you can see the surrounding area with hills and
8 valleys in the distance.
9 Then we move on to one of the exhumation sites. Here four graves were exhumed
10 that held in total 12 bodies. So many years after the massacre, there are now only
11 skeletal remains. This means that the analysis of the cause of death was limited to
12 trauma visible on the bones themselves. According to the conclusions of the forensic
13 experts, for seven of the bodies, homicide is the most plausible cause of death. For
14 the remaining bodies, the experts could not conclusively determine the cause of death
15 because there was no obvious sign of trauma on the bones. This means that some
16 injuries such as machete wounds may not have been visible on the bones.
17 I'm now showing you a reconstructed -- a photograph of a reconstructed skull of one
18 of the victims exhumed from the first grave identified in the video just shown.
19 Experts found he was a boy between 12 and 17 years old and that the most plausible
20 cause of death was homicide involving a blunt object hitting the head in at least two
21 strikes.
22 Clothes found on the bodies in the graves appear to match clothes on the bodies of the
23 victims in the photographs we showed earlier. For example, in this grave in Kobu,
24 one victim was wearing blue trousers with a distinctive white band. The trousers
25 were recovered and cleaned as you can see in the next image. The trousers appear to
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1 match those worn by a victim photographed in the banana field shortly after the
2 massacre.
3 I will now describe Bosco Ntaganda's role and responsibility for these crimes. As
4 deputy chief of staff in charge of operations and organisation, Commander Ntaganda
5 decided how the attack was to be executed. He maintained contact with the
6 commanders on the ground, including Salumu Mulenda, through long and
7 short-range radios.
8 You will hear from an insider witness who followed the operation on the radio that
9 Bosco Ntaganda was communicating instructions to the ground commanders during
10 the operation. The log of recorded radio messages confirms this. On the eve of the
11 attack, on 13 February 2003, Commander Mulenda reported to the UPC leadership,
12 including Bosco Ntaganda, on the security situation on the ground. He requested
13 bombs and heavy weapons. As you can see on your screen, here is the message he
14 sent, dated 13 February 2003. Commander Mulenda is the commander of the 409th
15 brigade infantry, and Bosco Ntaganda is copied as chief of staff in charge of
16 operations and organisation. I will read the message in French:
17 (Interpretation) "The situation is not calm. There have been confrontations near
18 Kilo. There have been three dead on our side and one injured near Kobu. I am
19 requesting bombs, APGs for the attacks."
20 (Speaks English) Several days later on 18 February 2003 at 9.10 in the morning,
21 Commander Mulenda informs Bosco Ntaganda by the same radio messages that one
22 of his subordinates, a man known as Commander Américain, threatened to desert
23 because he was scared of the way in which the enemy seized a weapon from the UPC
24 in Lipri. Within hours, Commander Ntaganda responds, issues the order to advance
25 and insists that no commander can refuse an order coming from above.
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1 Bosco Ntaganda says, and I quote in French (Interpretation) "You are informed the
2 following message according to which there is a commander who is refusing to
3 advance. That has not yet happened in the army. There is no commander who has
4 the capacity to refuse an order coming from above."
5 (Speaks English) Significantly, on the following day, 19 February 2003, Bosco
6 Ntaganda updated Thomas Lubanga and Floribert Kisembo on the progress of the
7 attack. He tells them that his troops are positioned in the zones of Lipri, Bambu and
8 Kobu and that he will inform them of what follows. I will read his message in
9 French (Interpretation) "The operation to remain in Lipri, Bambu and Kobu. The
10 troops have already arrived in each area. You will be kept informed of events."
11 (Speaks English) These messages confirm Bosco Ntaganda's command of the troops
12 that were attacking and knowledge of their movements and progress. He's in direct
13 content -- contact with Commander Mulenda, one of the principal perpetrators of the
14 massacre in Kobu.
15 Bosco Ntaganda's orders to target all Lendu, orders he personally issued during the
16 November 2002 attack on Mongbwalu, continued. You will hear from insider
17 witnesses who participated in this operation that when they left for Kobu, the orders
18 were clear: Go and kill everyone.
19 For example, on or about 18 February 2003, the morning of the attack on Kobu,
20 Commander Mulenda organised a parade of his troops in Kilo. He ordered his
21 soldiers to cleanse the triangle between Lipri, Bambu and Kobu, to clean out those
22 villages, to flatten them. He explicitly gave the order to kill everyone they would
23 find, including civilians.
24 Bosco Ntaganda's order, kupiga na kuchaji, was implemented by his troops. His
25 troops massacred the victims in the Kobu banana field. The UPC leadership
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1 deployed Commander Mulenda and his troops knowing that they had committed
2 crimes during the attack in Mongbwalu just several months before.
3 After the attack in and around Lipri, Kobu and Bambu, Commander Ntaganda
4 praised Commander Mulenda for the way he had managed to attack and capture
5 Kobu. Even as international organisations began reporting on these crimes, Bosco
6 Ntaganda told a senior UPC insider that Commander Mulenda was a real man.
7 Your Honours, in this attack, Bosco Ntaganda is charged with war crimes and crimes
8 against humanity committed by his troops in and around no less than 26 locations,
9 attacks against civilians, murder, attempted murder, rape, sexual slavery, attacks
10 against protected objects, destruction of property, forcible transfer of population,
11 pillaging and persecution.
12 The attacks on Mongbwalu in the first attack we've heard of today and in Lipri,
13 Bambu and Kobu in the second and the surrounding areas were intentional attacks
14 against civilians and both were unlawful.
15 You may hear evidence in this case that the UPC attacks were launched on legitimate
16 military targets. You may hear that the UPC's crime -- the UPC's enemies, the APC
17 or Lendu militia, were present in the area. There were also financial motives for
18 attacking Mongbwalu as it was the site of a major gold mine. But this doesn't detract
19 from the fact that the UPC deliberately targeted the non-Hema civilian populations
20 living in these places. Those civilians didn't lose their protected status simply
21 because there may have been combatants amongst them. This intentional targeting
22 violated the principle of distinction. Every commander has the duty to distinguish
23 between military and civilian targets. Bosco Ntaganda did not do that. Instead, as
24 the evidence will show, he and the UPC troops fired into groups of fleeing civilians,
25 intentionally targeted the non-Hema population and killed unarmed civilians.
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1 Your Honour, I pause before starting a next area. I think it will take me more than
2 15 minutes.
3 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much, Ms Samson.
4 It means that we exhausted this part of our session, so we will break now until 2.30,
5 and then we will continue with the last part of the Prosecution opening statement.
6 So 2.30, please be back.
7 THE COURT USHER: All rise.
8 (Recess taken at 12.45 p.m.)
9 (Upon resuming in open session at 2.31 p.m.)
10 THE COURT USHER: All rise.
11 Please be seated.
12 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Good afternoon. We will now proceed with the final
13 part of Prosecution's opening statement, which will be presented by Ms Samson.
14 So, Ms Samson, you have the floor, please.
15 MS SAMSON: Thank you, Mr President.
16 Let me now turn to the evidence of the recruitment and use of children under the age
17 of 15 by the UPC and Bosco Ntaganda personally and their rape and sexual slavery
18 by UPC soldiers under his command and control.
19 From August 2002, the UPC undertook massive and organised campaigns to recruit
20 soldiers. They recruited adults and children alike without distinction; anyone who
21 could hold a gun would do. This included children who were 14, 13, 12 and even
22 younger.
23 Witnesses will tell you that children in the UPC were referred to as kadogo, a Swahili
24 term that means a small or young one.
25 The UPC intentionally targeted these children. They wanted children in their armed
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1 force because children were obedient and undemanding. They were also fearless.
2 Their innocence was easy to exploit.
3 Bosco Ntaganda was in charge of recruitment and training for the UPC. He
4 personally recruited children. He regularly visited training camps to check on
5 recruits' progress and to boost morale. He provided uniforms and weapons when
6 recruits finished their military training and were deployed into combat, and he
7 selected boys and girls for his personal escort.
8 You may hear about children under the age of 15 who purportedly joined the UPC
9 voluntarily, but the children's motives are irrelevant as consent is not a valid defence
10 to the crime of enlistment.
11 On 12 February 2003, just before the UPC attacks in Lipri, Bambu and Kobu,
12 Bosco Ntaganda and senior UPC leaders, including Thomas Lubanga, John de Dieu
13 Tinanzabo and Aimable Rafiki visited one of the UPC's military training camps. It's
14 a camp located near Bunia in a place called Rwampara. This visit was videotaped
15 and witnesses present will testify about it.
16 I will now show your Honours three brief clips from this visit.
17 In the first video excerpt you will see Bosco Ntaganda and senior UPC members,
18 some of whom address the recruits. Thomas Lubanga gives a speech to boost
19 morale. You'll see the recruits, some of them are holding sticks, others are holding
20 AK-47 rifles. And you will also see uniformed soldiers. Some of the recruits are
21 clearly under the age of 15. We have slowed down the video at times to highlight
22 some of the children.
23 Thomas Lubanga introduces Bosco Ntaganda to the recruits as the chief of staff, and
24 he asks the recruits whether Bosco Ntaganda comes to visit them often. They
25 confirm that he does. The excerpt begins with a soldier leading the recruits with a
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1 song. You will hear that the UPC used songs to boost morale and teach their war
2 ideology.
3 (Viewing of the video excerpt)
4 MS SAMSON: On the left is Commander Bosco Ntaganda in purple. He is
5 speaking to Rafiki on the right.
6 (Viewing of the video excerpt)
7 MS SAMSON: In the dark blue shirt is UPC Commander Kasangaki. Here, in the
8 centre of the screen, in the military uniform and hat is Thomas Lubanga.
9 (Viewing of the video excerpt)
10 MS SAMSON: You can see two recruits here, they clearly look under 15.
11 (Viewing of the video excerpt)
12 MS SAMSON: The second video clip that I will show your Honours comes from the
13 same UPC visit to this Rwampara camp on the same day, 12 February 2003. This
14 next clip has been slowed down in places for your Honours to see the UPC recruits
15 more closely. Some children who appear manifestly under 15 years old have been
16 highlighted.
17 (Viewing of the video excerpt)
18 MS SAMSON: The final video excerpt that I will show is from the end of
19 Bosco Ntaganda's visit to Rwampara on 12 February 2003. You will see
20 Bosco Ntaganda get into a truck, along with his escorts, and leave. The excerpt has
21 also been slowed down. You will also see a child in military uniform, throwing a
22 gun into the back of the truck before getting into it. You can see how small the child
23 is as compared to the height of the truck. Then you will see Bosco Ntaganda, in
24 purple, getting into that same vehicle.
25 (Viewing of the video excerpt)
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1 MS SAMSON: Two witnesses who worked with the United Nations in 2002
2 and 2003 estimated that 40 percent of each militia force in Ituri were children under
3 the age of 18 with a significant minority below the age of 15.
4 Now on your screen is an excerpt from a register of a demobilisation centre in Bunia
5 that opened in June 2003. The register records the entry of children to the centre,
6 including their name, age and armed group. On this page alone 9 of the 14 children
7 listed are under the age of 15 and came from the UPC.
8 On the next page, 17 children are listed as having been in the UPC and under 15 years
9 old.
10 After children were recruited by Bosco Ntaganda and his troops they were taken to
11 one of the UPC's military camps for training such as the Rwampara training camp we
12 saw earlier on the video. There was a network of UPC military camps throughout
13 Ituri.
14 The map now on your screens depicts the locations of only some of these camps.
15 Conditions in UPC military training camps were harsh and children were treated no
16 differently than adult recruits. They were taught to be tough, forced to run long
17 distances, to perform military drills like marching, crawling and carrying heavy
18 ammunition. They were typically fed only once a day.
19 Discipline in the camps was also severe. Children were whipped or beaten when
20 they stopped during exercises, when they complained about being hungry, or when
21 they tried to run away. Witnesses will tell you that children who were caught
22 attempting to escape were severely punished, or worse, killed.
23 Bosco Ntaganda and his troops also recruited young girls. These girls underwent
24 the same harsh treatment during military training as the boys. And, in addition,
25 these young girls were routinely raped and sexually enslaved. Girl soldiers in the
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1 UPC were called PMFs, which stood for personnel militaire féminin.
2 Rape of these girls was so common that the soldiers sang songs about it. The words
3 to one of these songs are as follows: "Why should I marry a PMF, for what use,
4 where am I to go with her? Food of the leader, like a guduria, cooking pot for the
5 party."
6 These songs, comparing the girl soldiers to food for the leaders and communal
7 cooking pots for the party, were not only degrading, they encouraged rape and sexual
8 slavery within the UPC.
9 Some commanders took young girls as so-called wives forcing them to provide
10 domestic labour. These young girls were deprived of their liberty as they feared
11 being beaten or killed if they tried to escape. The commanders exercised physical
12 control over them. They were seen as the property of the commander to be exploited,
13 including sexually at will.
14 You will hear from witnesses who were soldiers within the UPC and who were
15 themselves victims of rape and sexual slavery. You will also hear from military
16 insiders who were aware of the sexual exploitation of young girls within the ranks of
17 the UPC. Their evidence will illustrate the frequency and brutality of the sexual
18 violence perpetrated against these girls.
19 Bosco Ntaganda has not been charged as a direct perpetrator of rape or sexual slavery
20 of child soldiers. You will however hear evidence that Bosco Ntaganda raped girls
21 within the ranks of the UPC, including those in his own escort. This evidence is
22 relevant to the Chamber's determination of his intent and knowledge of the crimes, to
23 the modes of liability charged and as patterned evidence for contextual purposes.
24 You will hear from witnesses that the UPC used children at roadblocks to threaten
25 civilians and demand money from them. You will hear about children being sent
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1 into the bush to conduct patrols at night, where they would be encouraged to raid
2 houses and terrorize the population.
3 Children were also sent on missions to gather intelligence and act as spies. Young
4 girls, sometimes referred to as IS girls, were ordered to dress in civilian clothes and to
5 go to enemy camps to gather intelligence. Gaining admission to these enemy camps
6 typically meant having sex with the enemy soldiers. These IS girls were also placed
7 at extreme risk of being discovered and killed.
8 In the course of the trial, you will hear about children being sent to surrounding
9 villages to pillage. Armed with weapons, these children were ordered to enter
10 people's houses, threaten and beat them and loot their belongings.
11 Military insiders who fought in the attack in Mongbwalu in November and
12 December 2002 saw children under the age of 15 directly engaged in fighting on the
13 frontline, including in Bosco Ntaganda's unit. UPC child soldiers also fought on the
14 frontline during the attack on Lipri, Bambu, Kobu and surrounding villages in
15 February 2003 and in other battles.
16 Finally, you will hear that Bosco Ntaganda himself used children under the age of 15
17 as bodyguards, as did other senior UPC officials and commanders, including Thomas
18 Lubanga and Floribert Kisembo.
19 On the same day that Bosco Ntaganda visited the Rwampara training camp, 12
20 February 2003, a UPC national secretary wrote to the G5 of the FPLC, as you can see
21 on your screens, about demobilising those children between the ages of 10 to 15 or 16
22 who would be willing to demobilise and return to civilian life.
23 It says, and I will read in French: (Interpretation) "The national secretariat of the
24 national education on behalf of UPC/RP and its president initiated a programme of
25 demobilisation, disarmament, re-education, reinstallation and reintegration for the
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1 benefit of child soldiers aged between 10 and 15 and 16 years who have voluntarily
2 accepted to return to civilian life in order to rebuild their future."
3 (Speaks English) This attempt to demobilise children within the UPC never
4 happened, but this document provides evidence that there were children under 15 in
5 the UPC and that senior officials knew it.
6 The Prosecution will also present three additional purported demobilisation orders:
7 The first allegedly issued in October 2002; the second on 27 January 2003; and the
8 third in June 2003.
9 These demobilisation orders were prepared as a result of pressure from international
10 actors. There was no genuine intention to demobilise child soldiers. Witnesses
11 who were involved in demobilisation efforts in Ituri at that time, including
12 Witness P-46, refer to this display by the UPC to demobilise children as a sham and a
13 masquerade. You'll hear that nothing changed as a result of these purported
14 demobilisation orders.
15 While these orders fail to demonstrate a genuine intention to demobilise child soldiers
16 from the UPC, they clearly demonstrate the presence of child soldiers within the UPC
17 and knowledge of their presence.
18 The most critical contradiction to any purported order to demobilise children from
19 the UPC is Bosco Ntaganda and Thomas Lubanga's visit to the Rwampara training
20 camp on 12 February 2003.
21 You will recall the video just played of that very visit, where children visibly under
22 the age of 15 were being trained as soldiers, and you heard Thomas Lubanga's
23 morale-boosting speech to the recruits. This visit to a UPC training camp by senior
24 UPC members, where there's an obvious presence of children, is wholly incompatible
25 with a genuine intention to demobilise child soldiers.
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1 Finally, your Honours, in an interview to an NGO in November 2010, appearing on
2 your screens, Commander Ntaganda acknowledged that there were children in the
3 UPC, even if he denied being responsible for their recruitment and training.
4 (Viewing of the video excerpt)
5 MS SAMSON: Bosco Ntaganda's senior position as the UPC's deputy chief of staff,
6 in charge of operations and organisation, is well documented in the evidence. His
7 senior position gave him significant authority over his troops. You will hear from
8 witnesses that Bosco Ntaganda tightly controlled and influenced his forces.
9 As you have heard, Bosco Ntaganda participated in the charged crimes in a variety of
10 ways. First, he committed crimes himself during the attack in November 2002, in the
11 Mongbwalu area, he murdered, pillaged, attacked civilians and protected objects and
12 persecuted civilians. The evidence of these crimes is not only significant for his own
13 criminal responsibility, but also for his responsibility for the crimes of his
14 subordinates.
15 As a commander, he set the standard for his troops and influenced their behaviour
16 through his commission of serious crimes. His behaviour signaled to his troops
17 what was expected of them.
18 Second, he committed crimes indirectly through his subordinates in the FPLC and
19 through Hema civilian supporters whom he instructed to commit crimes. He did
20 this with others who agreed on a common plan to take over Ituri by force and to drive
21 out the non-Hema civilian populations.
22 As the most senior military leader in charge of operations and organisation, and as a
23 hands-on leader, Bosco Ntaganda was a strong controlling hand behind the common
24 plan. His essential contributions took many forms: He planned, directed,
25 controlled and facilitated UPC attacks and crimes. He obtained and distributed
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1 weapons and ammunition for the UPC attacks and crimes. And he recruited, trained
2 and used children under the age of 15 as soldiers in the UPC. He structured the
3 FPLC, insisted on obedience to commands, respect for the hierarchy and he
4 disciplined the troops.
5 His participation cannot have been inadvertent or uninformed. The attacks on
6 Mongbwalu and Lipri, Bambu and Kobu areas were not his first attacks. He knew
7 the means and methods that were to be used from his recent command, experience in
8 the attacks in Bunia, Songolo, Zumbe and Mambasa, Komanda, Eringeti. He knew
9 of the coordinated contributions of his co-perpetrators and the joint control that they
10 exercised. And because of his knowledge of the criminal methods he previously
11 employed, he must have intended the commission of each of the crimes resulting
12 from the common plan.
13 Third, not only did Bosco Ntaganda commit crimes, order or induce their commission
14 or contribute to crimes committed by the UPC, but he was also a military commander
15 with effective control over his forces who knew or should have known of their crimes.
16 He did not take all reasonable and necessary measures to prevent or punish them.
17 Bosco Ntaganda intended for these crimes to occur. His words, deeds and
18 knowledge of the FPLC's methods all demonstrate his intent to commit crimes and his
19 knowledge of crimes. At the very least, he knew that the crimes would occur in the
20 ordinary course of implementing the common plan.
21 Bosco Ntaganda was an active commander. He was either on the ground with the
22 fighting forces or he was controlling operations from a short distance. He knew
23 what was happening during operations. His personal conduct and intent must be
24 interpreted in the context of his abundant knowledge of the activities of the UPC and
25 its soldiers.
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1 Bosco Ntaganda is individually responsible for the crimes, regardless of the liability
2 of any other senior commanders within the UPC, that other co-perpetrators may also
3 be criminally responsible for these crimes doesn't retract from Bosco Ntaganda's own
4 criminal responsibility.
5 To conclude then, Mr President, your Honours, Bosco Ntaganda was the UPC deputy
6 chief of staff, in charge of operations and organisation. He was a senior military
7 commander, the man who was in charge of the recruitment and training of troops,
8 who planned and commanded attacks and who often led the troops into battle. He
9 personally committed crimes and ordered or induced their commission. He had
10 control over the troops who committed crimes.
11 The evidence from the victims and other witnesses, the evidence from international
12 staff, the evidence from official UPC documents and the evidence from the accused's
13 associates will demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt Bosco Ntaganda's responsibility
14 for these crimes.
15 Thank you.
16 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much, Ms Samson. So it means that
17 you have finished and you complete all your opening statement?
18 MS SAMSON: Yes, Mr President, with one minor correction to page 41 of the
19 English transcript, line 25, should read "June 2003" and not "January 2003." Thank
20 you.
21 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much.
22 So it means we covered all the schedule for today. We will continue tomorrow 9.30
23 with opening statements of Legal Representatives of Victims.
24 I'm just reminding all of you that legal representatives have one hour allocated for the
25 statements together, so 30 minutes each, and then we will have opening statement of
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1 Defence, Defence have been allocated three hours, including a possible unsworn
2 statement of Mr Ntaganda. Is it okay?
3 MR BOURGON: (Interpretation) I thank you, Mr President. I would like to
4 confirm that we will indeed need the three hours in the totality.
5 I am now in a position to confirm that Mr Ntaganda will indeed be addressing the
6 Chamber tomorrow at the end of the opening statements for the Defence. And I
7 thank you.
8 PRESIDING JUDGE FREMR: Thank you very much.
9 Court is adjourned.
10 THE COURT USHER: All rise.
11 (The hearing ends in open session at 3.00 p.m.)
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