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DRC militia chief appoints Briton
27/11/2007 08:41 - (SA)
The Hague - Democratic Republic of Congo militia chief Germain Katanga appointed on Monday a British barrister to defend him at his war crimes trial in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced.
Katanga assigned David Hooper as his principal counsel for a trial, which saw him accused of three counts of crimes against humanity and six charges of war crimes, notably massacres, enlisting child soldiers and sexual slavery.
The ICC would meet his defence costs, the statement added, pending a fuller inquiry into the state of the accused's finances.
Katanga first appeared before the ICC on October 22, and was represented by barrister Xavier-Jean Keita in a hearing plagued by translation problems.
War crimes trial scheduled for March
Katanga - who went under the name of Simba - was the head of the Patriotic Resistance Force of Ituri (PRFI), a militia created at the end of 2002 with Ugandan support.
A second Ituri war crimes trial would begin at The Hague in March 2008 of Thomas Lubanga, the head of a rival DRC militia group, the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), for allegedly recruiting child soldiers.
Ituri, a region rich in natural resources, was from 1999 wracked by ethnic bloodshed between the Hema and Lendu peoples as well as being embroiled in the broader rebel war that raged in the DRC between 1998 and 2003, drawing in more than half a dozen foreign African armies on rival sides.
The ICC could only prosecute crimes committed after its own creation, in October 2002.
International relief agencies estimated that at least 60 000 people died in the Ituri clashes, which were a bloody mixture of ethnic strife and territorial fighting among rival militias.
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