Congo’s Kids Get Support From Angelina Jolie at the ICC
Angelina Jolie Attends Trial At The Hague.
Thanks Angelina – We Know You Care Baby,
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Angelina Jolie sat in a courtside booth Tuesday at the International Criminal Court and watched the trial of a Congolese warlord charged with using child soldiers.
In a statement released by the court, Jolie, a mother of six, said the case against Thomas Lubanga is a “landmark trial for children” and paid tribute to the former child soldiers who travel to the court’s seat in The Hague to testify.
“After watching the proceedings from the viewing booth, I stood up and found Thomas Lubanga Dyilo looking at me,” Jolie said. “I imagined how difficult it must be for all the brave young children who have come to testify against him.”
Tuesday’s visit was Jolie’s second to the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal in less than two years. The goodwill ambassador for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said children deserve special protection during wars.
“Using children in conflict is a heinous crime and destroys the very fabric of a society,” she said.
Jolie also met with the court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, during her private visit to the court.
Lubanga, founder and former leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots political movement and its armed wing, has pleaded innocent to charges of recruiting and using child soldiers in tribal conflicts in 2002-2003.
His is the first international trial to focus solely on child soldiers. It started in January and is expected to continue throughout this year.
The United Nations estimates up to 250,000 child soldiers still fight in more than a dozen countries.
Congo war crimes trial ‘unfair’
bbcnews 27 January 2009
Thomas Lubanga insists he was trying to bring peace to the Ituri region
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The war crimes trial against former Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga is “prejudicial”, his lawyer has told day two of the case at The Hague.
She claimed the prosecution’s use of anonymous witnesses and secrecy clauses for the International Criminal Court (ICC) trial would hamper the defence.
Mr Lubanga, 48, denies using hundreds of child soldiers in DR Congo’s five-year conflict, which ended in 2003.
The case is the first to come before the ICC.
Mr Lubanga was the leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) and its armed wing at the time of the alleged crimes in 2002-2003, and still has strong support among his Hema community in Ituri.
‘Political trial’
Defence counsel Catherine Mabille told the court: “How can we have a fair trial under [these] conditions?
“There has been a wholesale abuse of the rules by the office of the prosecutor. The [situation] is prejudicial and detrimental to the defence.”
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THOMAS LUBANGA
 Leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots, an ethnic Hema militia
Accused of recruiting children under 15 as soldiers
Arrested in Kinshasa in March 2005
Held by the ICC at The Hague since 2006
Born in 1960, has a degree in psychology
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She complained that the majority of alleged victims represented at the trial are anonymous and many prosecution witnesses will testify behind closed doors.
Claiming the defence and the public had been excluded from about half of pre-trial hearings, Ms Mabille also said this prevented her client from defending himself adequately.
“If we do things this way, international criminal justice will become very secretive,” Ms Mabille told the three presiding judges, according to the AFP news agency.
Her colleague Jean-Marie Biju-Duval said the trial was political and that government forces had recruited child soldiers.
“The prosecution has chosen to spare those who bear the highest responsibility and rather focus on somebody there is a desire to eliminate for political reasons,” he said.
Mr Lubanga insists he was trying to bring peace to Ituri, a region in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo wracked by years of conflict between rival groups seeking to control its vast mineral wealth.
Seeking a sentence of up to 30 years, prosecutors say child soldiers enlisted for Mr Lubanga’s Hema militia were used to kill members of the rival Lendu ethnic group, or as his bodyguards.
Children were allegedly abducted on their way to school or to sports fields and young girls were taken as sexual slaves by militia commanders as soon as they reached puberty.
The UN says more than 30,000 children were recruited during the fighting, which saw some 60,000 people lose their lives.
Congolese Warlord on Trial for Using Child Soldiers
Congolese former militia leader Thomas Lubanga pleaded not guilty to using child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 1998-2003 civil war, as the International Criminal Court’s historic first trial opened Monday.
The case is the first for the ICC at The Hague in the Netherlands, and the first international criminal prosecution to focus solely on child soldiers, according to human rights groups.
Lubanga showed no emotion as his lawyer said he pleaded not guilty to sending children under age 15 to fight in the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots political party in 2002-03, reported the Associated Press.
Lubanga, 48, says he was trying to keep foreign fighters from taking Congo’s vast mineral reserves from the eastern Ituri region.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he would seek a sentence “close to the maximum” of 30 years, according to the BBC.
Lubanga’s trial is a defining moment both in the history of Congo’s internal armed conflict and in the ICC’s history, laying legal precedents for future trials. The ICC officially opened in 2002 as the first permanent war crimes court.
Lubanga was arrested in early 2006, and his trial was initially set for June 23, 2008. But a dispute over the use of classified information delayed the proceedings.
The United Nations gave the prosecution information that could have helped prove Lubanga’s innocence, but the prosecutor did not share the information with the defense, believing it was classified.
ICC judges then ruled that the prosecution was obligated to share any evidence that may benefit Lubanga. A new trial date was set for Jan. 26.
The court’s delays and the cumbersome evidence-gathering process raised questions about the ICC’s efficiency and effectiveness, though analysts say there are no shortcuts in navigating international criminal trials like Lubanga’s.
“There have been delays in the Lubanga trial that have come about as a result of the court leaning over backwards to protect Lubanga’s rights,” said David Scheffer, director of the Center for International Human Rights at the Northwestern University School of Law. According to Scheffer, prosecutors in war crimes tribunals often receive classified information from governments or organizations called “lead evidence” that is inadmissible in court but that prosecutors can use to gather other evidence for trial, pointing them in the right direction.
Scheffer said he believes speed bumps such as delays over the U.N. information are natural in a young institution like the ICC. “The delay is fodder to a lot of critics who think the justice is too slow and wonder why the trial hasn’t been jump-started,” Scheffer said. “But often these first trials trigger a lot of new issues … and the defense throws a lot of things at the judges to see if they stick, because there’s no precedent for it,” he said.
Richard Dicker, director for International Justice at Human Rights Watch, said other hurdles come into play in war crimes trials. “Investigating widespread, systematic crimes in the context of ongoing armed conflicts — many of which unfold in very remote regions with little infrastructure and transport — is very difficult,” he said.
Witness intimidation and prolonged instability also appeared to be obstacles to the Lubanga investigation because the militia leader still has strong pockets of support in the Ituri region that could have led to the spread of misinformation about the case, said Dicker.
Lubanga’s supporters capitalized on the pre-trial complications last year, when the court considered halting the trial and releasing Lubanga, to spread rumors intended to frighten his former victims and their families, he said.
Dicker said the ICC’s success will depend ultimately on how the information released during the trial is conveyed to the communities affected by the alleged crimes.
ICC public information and outreach coordinator Paul Madidi is organizing the court’s efforts to ensure people in Ituri can follow Lubanga’s case, but he said he has run into some obstacles, including the underlying ethnic tensions shading people’s perceptions of the case in the region.
“There are a lot of people who still support Thomas Lubanga,” Madidi said. “And we have some difficulty in keeping up dialogue with these people.”
Madidi and his team have tried to improve their communication network in Ituri’s communities, including arranging for a large screen TV to be put up in a main gathering area in Bunia, Ituri’s capital, so people can watch the trial live. Several Congolese journalists will attend the trial and run radio reports through the national broadcaster.
“We’ll also organize some meetings with people who have questions about the trial,” Madidi said. “We have to continue to talk and bring views and good information to the people.”
– By Anne Stopper, Online NewsHour
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Tags: Angelina Jolie, child activists, child soldiers, congo, genocide, icc, International Criminal Court, The Hague, Thomas Lubanga, Union of Congolese Patriots, warlord
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