The trial of Congolese rebel commander Bosco Ntaganda at the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands begins in July. Ntaganda faces 13 counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity for his role in Congo’s civil conflict. University of Illinois law professor Patrick Keenan is an expert in human rights, globalization and international criminal law. He spoke with News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora about what to expect in the trial.
Ntaganda surrendered in 2013 at a U.S. embassy – an ignominious end to someone nicknamed “The Terminator.” Why did he give himself up?
The theory goes that Ntaganda turned himself in because he was facing a greater threat from other people than he would from the international community. He had done enough bad things, and enough bad things on behalf of other people, so that he was more likely to be killed by them than face a really serious penalty in the International Criminal Court.
What makes this particular case so important for international law?
Ntaganda was an incredibly violent commander of rebel forces who killed, or whose forces killed, a lot of people. He and his forces were also responsible for executions, recruiting and using child soldiers, pillaging, rape and sexual slavery, among other heinous crimes. A large part of the problem is the spillover from the Rwandan genocide that happened in 1994.
Ntaganda and his forces were responsible for one of the biggest campaigns of mass rape in history. The U.N. monitoring reports are absolutely heartbreaking to read. The level of violence is just incredible and incomprehensible, and much of it was funded by mining resources exploited by Ntaganda and the forces he commanded.
In a recent paper, I argue that Ntaganda could be prosecuted for more than what the ICC is prosecuting him for. That would not only provide more justice to more victims, but it could also provide his victims the opportunity to receive reparations.
How long will the trial last?
The trial will be long because it’s a complicated case. My prediction is it will go on for more than a year, partly because it takes place in multiple languages. The defendants and victims all speak different languages, and there are logistical hurdles in bringing victims from Congo to Europe to testify against him.
The trial process is also somewhat rigid with appropriate due process protections for the defendant. Many of the victims are coming from a place where the legal system doesn’t work that way. Many of the victims also don’t read or write, don’t speak the languages spoken in court, nor have they been outside Congo before. So they haven’t engaged with the international legal system all that much. Now they’re in another continent, face-to-face with someone who was one of the most feared people in their part of the world for a long time, and they have to testify against him.
So it’s going to take awhile, but I think that’s OK. Due process matters, and you don’t want anyone to be able to cry foul after the fact. The process has to be fair for it to have any legitimacy in the eyes of the world.
That doesn’t mean that the ICC doesn’t have its share of critics. The trial process in the ICC is a long and fairly cumbersome one, and it gets criticized a lot for that. But they’re trying to be responsive to that. There was a proposal to have the opening of the Ntaganda trial in one of the towns where some of the worst violence took place. It would have afforded the victims a chance to see justice in action. Unfortunately, for budgetary reasons, it was decided that the trial would take place at The Hague in the Netherlands.
One other thing to look for: The ICC is criticized a lot because all of the cases so far are from Africa. They have no cases from outside of Africa. They have many referrals from outside of Africa, meaning someone says there’s a human rights violation in, say, Yemen or Colombia or some other place in the world. But all of their cases have been from Africa. When the trial starts in July, there will be a fresh round of criticism of the ICC for focusing only on Africa.
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