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The International Criminal Court's docket in Africa

With the confirmation of charges against four senior Kenyan leaders, there are now seven different countries where the International Criminal Court has filed charges of crimes against humanity. All of those cases emanate from Africa.

2. Congo charges

Jerry Lampen/AP/File
In this September 2011 file photo, Rwandan rebel Callixte Mbarushimana sits in the courtroom of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.

  • By Scott Baldauf Staff writer

At the behest of the Congolese government, the ICC launched investigations against five separate individuals for crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, in what has come to be known as the Second Congo War.

*Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, founder of the Union of Congolese Patriots, is charged with the use of child soldiers. His trial concluded on Aug. 2011, and the judges are still deliberating over a verdict.

*German Katanga, commander of the Front for Patriotic Resistance in Ituri, and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, founder of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front, have been jointly charged with crimes against humanity for launching a coordinated attack against a civilian population in Feb. 2003, murder, use of child soldiers, sexual slavery, and inhumane treatment of prisoners. This trial is ongoing.

*Bosco Ntaganda, was a commander of the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo, and is charged with enlisting, conscripting, and using child soldiers. He serves as a general in the newly integrated Congolese Army and remains a fugitive.

*Callixte Mbarushimana, is alleged to have been executive secretary of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, and was charged with attacking civilian populations, murder, torture, and rape during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which 800,000 people were killed. He later moved his militia to Congo, where he's accused of war crimes in that country's bloody conflict. The ICC declined to confirm the charges against Mbarushimana on Dec. 16, 2011, and ordered his release. But the French government has launched its own charges against Mbarushimana.

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Mark Sappenfield
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