Probe into war crimes in DRC

2006-04-03 21:03

Kinshasa - The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has begun an official visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to investigate war crimes in the country of the court's first detainee.

Thomas Lubanga, head of an armed militia that rampaged through the northeast DRC, was brought before The Hague-based court on March 20 where he was charged with having recruited and conscripted children as soldiers, forcing them into active combat.

Lubanga is the first detainee of the world's only permanent war crimes court, which was created in July 2002.

The inquiry in the DRC looking at "different crimes committed by several armed groups in the Ituri region" and will probably lead to more indictments based on the evidence discovered, the ICC said in a statement released in Kinshasa.

"One of the objectives of the prosecutor's office is to help prevent the commission of crimes in the region" and "to put an end to impunity", the statement added.

Moreno-Ocampo has previously indicated that he wanted to "expand" the indictment against the ex-chief of the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, one of several armed groups active in the volatile Ituri region.

Lubanga was arrested in March last year after DRC President Joseph Kabila asked the ICC to investigate war crimes committed in the vast central African state, which emerged from a five-year conflict in 2003.

Ituri has for years been the scene of devastating clashes between rival militias and inter-ethnic violence, often fuelled by competition for control over the region's gold and other mineral resources.

Since 1999, fighting between the militias and violence between the Hema and Lendu tribes have caused more than 60 000 deaths in the region, according to humanitarian groups.

- AFP