The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has sentenced the former militia leader and former General of the Congolese Army Bosco Ntaganda to 30 years in prison for war crimes.
As early as July, the judges had found the former warlord guilty of all 18 charges - including, for the first time, sexual violence as a weapon of war in the Congo.
The court finds it proven that Ntaganda - who called himself "Terminator" - committed massacres of civilians in 2002 and 2003 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was also responsible for the sexual enslavement of children, said the chairman Judge Robert Fremr from the Czech Republic.
Furthermore, the now 46-year-old was found guilty of murder, rape and the use of child soldiers. The court believed that Ntaganda was one of the main leaders of the rebel group Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo.
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Rwanda: How the genocide led to two Congo warsNtaganda had fled Rwanda in 1994 for genocide in neighboring Congo. There he joined a refugee camp of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) of today's Rwandan leader Paul Kagame, who ends the genocide in Rwanda after three months.
Then Ntaganda took part only as a soldier, later as a commander from the mid-1990s on two Congo wars. There he lay down from 2002 as chief of staff of the militia CNDP because of his cruelty the fight name "Terminator". In 2009, Ntaganda overthrew notorious rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and made himself head of the CNDP before merging with the Congolese National Army for several years.
AP / dpa
Bosco Ntaganda, a Congolese general in 2010, has been on the alert since 2006
Ntaganda is said to have enjoyed temporary support from Rwandan President Kagame. In 2013, after seven years on the run, the "Terminator" had self-defended himself and asserted his innocence. "I am a revolutionary, not a criminal," he declared in his closing remarks to the judges in 2018.
For the ICC, the conviction was a much needed success: it is only the third war crime sentence in the court's 17-year history. Ntaganda now has 30 days to appeal the verdict.