DR Congo massacre may alter international law
Benjamin Durr
Last updated: 10 hours ago
Case to be decided on March 7 could represent a breakthrough for
justice related to sexual crimes during war.
It was half past five on a Monday morning in February 2003 when the
first men arrived. They ran to the centre of the village carrying
machetes and spears and rifles. Some invaded the houses and shot
residents in their sleep, others cut them up with their machetes;
another group set the huts on fire and burnt the families alive.
As time went by, the commanders of the group put some chairs under the
mango trees close to the village and began to drink beer. By the end
of the afternoon, dead bodies of around 200 people were scattered on
the ground; and the commanders were drunk.
This is how the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC)
describes the attack on Bogoro, a village in the Eastern part of the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to the prosecutor's team
of investigators and lawyers, the attack is only one of many events
that make the conflict in Central Africa one of the bloodiest since
World War II. For almost ten years the ICC team has been building a
case against the alleged perpetrators of this particular attack. Now
the final stage has been reached.
On March 7 the judges at the Netherlands-based court will deliver
their ruling in the case against Germain Katanga, allegedly a leader
of one of the groups that committed the attack on Bogoro.
Ethnic cleansing?
Katanga has been charged with three counts of crimes against humanity,
namely murder, sexual slavery, and rape; as well as seven counts of
war crimes, among them the use of child soldiers, attacks on the
civilian population, and pillaging. The ICC is the first permanent
international court that has jurisdiction over grave human rights
violations.
According to the prosecution, the accused Germain Katanga was the
commander of the Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri (FRPI), a militia
in Eastern Congo. FRPI fighters were mainly members of the Lendu and
Ngiti ethnic groups and wanted to "wipe out" Bogoro village and its
predominantly Hema population, the prosecution stated.
The FRPI militia allegedly committed the attack on Bogoro jointly with
another rebel group led by Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui. Their leaders,
Katanga and Ngudjolo, were facing similar charges, and their trial
began in November 2009. In 2012, Ngudjolo was acquitted for lack of
evidence. The judges argued that witness testimony had been too
contradictory.
"The acquittal highlighted the fundamental weakness of the evidence
gathered by the prosecution," Phil Clark, a political scientist at the
University of London who is specialises in the region, told Al
Jazeera. Since both cases use the same batch of evidence, a conviction
of Germain Katanga is far from guaranteed, Clark adds.
"This trial lost much of its impact and the weakness of the
prosecutor's evidence has undermined the credibility of the ICC," he
says. "Many local people have already lost their faith in the ICC
process." Also politically the trial didn't have much of an impact on
the key actors. The large scale violence in Congo is carried out by
various rebel forces, often with the backing of the Congolese, Ugandan
or Rwandan governments, Clark explains. "The important role of other
regional governments is a key issue which has been skirted for fear of
losing the ICC's political allies in the region."
Sexual crimes
If not politically, the judgment could be pathbreaking legally though:
A convicition for sexual crimes would be considered a major victory
for the evolving nature of international law. According to experts,
the judgment can shape how the international community in the future
will deal with sexual violence crimes in conflicts.
"A conviction of sexual violence crimes would be an important
milestone for the court," Rianne Letschert, a professor in
international law and victimology at Tilburg University in the
Netherlands says. "This case is terribly important not only for
Katanga's victims but also for national and international cases in the
future."
Congo has a high prevalence of sexual violence. "A conviction at the
ICC would show that no immunity exists for those crimes and could
increase the pressure on national courts to prosecute sexual violence
crimes," Letschert told Al Jazeera. At the international level it
could further strengthen the recognition of sexual violence crimes
which could be added to charges in other cases before international
tribunals.
In Bogoro, women were raped, girls detained to serve as sex slaves or
forced into "marriage" with soldiers.
"We found her undressed and naked like an animal," a witness said when
describing a dead woman lying in her hut the day after the massacre.
"Her legs were open, one tied with a rope to the pillar, the other to
the door."
The prosecution has argued that Germain Katanga was one of the
commanders present when the attack on Bogoro took place. Therefore he
could have prevented the violence. Katanga denied that he participated
or knew when the attack was going to occur.
Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor at the ICC must not only prove
that Katanga knew what his troops were doing, but also that the Bogora
massacre was part of a widespread and systematic attack on the
civilian population - the essential element for crimes against
humanity.
Germain Katanga's defense team argued that the target of the attack in
February 2003 was a military base in Bogoro, not the civilian
population. According to the defence, inhabitants of the village have
taken part in the hostilities.
The decision in the Katanga case will be the third judgment in the
ICC's history. Germain Katanga could either follow Thomas Lubanga, a
Congolese "war lord" who was convicted of the recruitment of child
soldiers; or his co-accused Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui. Ngudjolo was
acquitted, but still cannot return to Congo and is allegedly waiting
in a hotel room in The Hague.
Follow Benjamin Dürr on Twitter: @benjaminduerr
http://m.aljazeera.com/se/2014215122427499229
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