Congo warlord is found guilty over child soldiers

The International Criminal Court issued its first verdict today when it found Thomas Lubanga guilty of recruiting and using children as soldiers and sex slaves in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He was accused of forcing children to kill and rape and faces a maximum sentence of life. The judgment marks a defining moment for the Hague-based court which has been criticised for failing to conclude a single trial in its first decade.

It also sets powerful legal precedents that could be used against Joseph Kony, the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army leader who found internet notoriety after the release of an online video of his crimes that has been watched 75 million times.

Today’s verdict was the first at an international tribunal to focus exclusively on the use of child soldiers. Like Lubanga, Kony has been accused by the ICC of leading a

militia that turned children into murderers. Actress and activist Angelina Jolie watched the hearing from the public gallery and said the verdict was a victory for the former child soldiers. “This is their day — where these children will feel there is no impunity for what happened to them, for what they suffered,” Jolie said.

Lubanga led the Union of Congolese Patriots, an ethnic Hema militia which was active in the war that started in the gold-rich Ituri region, in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 1999.

The militia was one of six groups in the conflict, which lasted until 2003 and killed an estimated 50,000 people. Chief prosecutor at the ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said: “The defendant stole the childhood of the victims by forcing them to kill and rape.”