Congo suspects plead not guilty to war crimes

Congo suspects plead not guilty to war crimes
November 27, 2008 8:33:50 AM PST
By MIKE CORDER
Two Congolese warlords pleaded not guilty Thursday at the International Criminal Court to charges of murder, rape and using child soldiers during a deadly attack on a village in 2003.

Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo entered their pleas to three counts of crimes against humanity and seven war crimes at a pretrial hearing at the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

No date was set for their trial to start, but it is expected to get under way next year.

They are accused of leading militia forces who killed more than 200 people in the village of Bogoro in eastern Congo in 2003, hacking many of their victims to death
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with machetes.

Prosecutors allege some survivors were raped and then turned into sex slaves for the fighters.

Katanga and Ngudjolo are the first of the four suspects the court has in its custody to formally enter pleas to charges against them.

Another Congolese warlord, Thomas Lubanga, will not plead until his trial starts on Jan. 26, although his attorney has said he will also plead not guilty to charges of using child soldiers.

All three suspects were involved in ethnic fighting in the province of Ituri in 2002-2003, part of a simmering conflict that most recently has erupted in the nearby North and South Kivu provinces where rebel leader Laurent Nkunda's forces are fighting the government.

U.N. peacekeepers are investigating widespread allegations that both sides are committing war crimes in that conflict.

At a preliminary hearing in June, Carine Bapita, a lawyer for one survivor of the attack on Bogoro, told judges that the woman, identified only as A012, "lost also six of her children, killed with machete blows, and of course all of her cows and property."

The International Criminal Court has filed charges against alleged war criminals in Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda and Sudan since it started work in 2002.