Criminal court holds first public hearing

Anthony Deutsch

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A Congolese warlord appeared before the International Criminal Court on Monday, the first suspect to stand trial since the permanent war crimes tribunal was created nearly four years ago.

Thomas Lubanga was in court for less 30 minutes and confirmed his identity and date of birth. Presiding judge Claude Jorda said charges of war crimes would be presented at the next hearing on June 27.

His appointed attorney protested the conditions of Lubanga’s arrest and detention.

“This arrest was not under any specific warrant, and no hearing (in Congo) was held as should have been,” said Belgian attorney Jean Flamme, who was assigned to represent him at the initial hearing.

Lubanga, 45, was arrested one year ago and kept in prison in Kinshasa until his extradition to The Hague.

The defendant, dressed in a dark suit and yellow tie, gave his occupation as “politician.” He waived his right to have his arrest warrant read in court.

Lubanga was flown to the Netherlands late Friday aboard a French Hercules military aircraft and taken into custody at the court’s newly opened detention unit. He is the only prisoner.

The arrest warrant covered crimes committed after July 1, 2002, when the court came into existence, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said over the weekend. Since then, 8,000 people have been killed and 600,000 displaced in Congo’s eastern Ituri province, he said.

Lubanga’s arrest was a milestone for the court, which fought to overcome fierce U.S. opposition to its creation and sought to prevent countries from ratifying the 1998 Rome Statute under which it was created.

The court has indicted five Ugandan rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army, but one was killed in battle and the other four have so far evaded capture.

Besides the conflicts in Congo and Uganda, the ICC is probing alleged war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region, but the investigation has been stymied by Sudan’s refusal to allow court officials into the territory.

U.S. critics feared the court would become a venue for politically motivated complaints, such as those brought by opponents of the Iraq war.

Last month, Moreno-Ocampo rejected appeals to begin a full-scale investigation of human rights abuses during the Iraq invasion.

In a letter to the 240 organizations or individuals who sought an investigation, he said his preliminary inquiry found that international law had been violated in the “willful killings” of at most a dozen civilians and in the “inhuman treatment” of about 20. That compared with thousands of people killed or tortured in the other cases he is investigating, the prosecutor said.

The court has jurisdiction only in cases involving those countries that ratified the treaty and are members of the court, and only when they lack the means to prosecute war crimes suspects in national courts. Case also may be referred to the court by the U.N. Security Council — as happened with Darfur.

(Associated Press)