The US Embassy in Rwanda was on Tuesday working out the logistics of transferring a Congolese warlord to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a day after Bosco Ntaganda walked off the street to face war crimes charges. Ntaganda stunned embassy staff in Kigali when he gave himself up, a seemingly meek end to a 15-year long career that saw him fight as a rebel and government soldier on both sides of the Rwanda-Congo border.
He specifically asked to be transferred to the Hague-based tribunal, the US State Department said. "We're completely working to facilitate his transfer to The Hague," said an official at the US Embassy in Kigali. "We are still figuring out how it's going to work."
Neither the United States nor Rwanda has an obligation to hand over the commander nicknamed "the Terminator" to the ICC as they are not signatories to the Rome Statute which set up the independent, permanent court in the Netherlands to try people accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Washington broadly supports the ICC, but testimony by Ntaganda, who has fought in a string of Rwanda-backed rebellions in Congo's east, may be damaging for the government of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a close US ally.
Rwandan-born Ntaganda faces charges of recruiting child soldiers, murder, ethnic persecution, sexual slavery and rape during the 2002-3 conflict in north-eastern Congo's gold-mining Ituri district. A UN panel of experts said Ntaganda was most recently a leader of the year-old M23 rebellion - an insurgency in eastern Congo that experts have said was backed by senior Rwandan government and military officials.
One of Africa's most wanted men, Ntaganda's fall came after a split within the M23 rebel movement in past months left the rebel commander increasingly sidelined and, eventually, defeated on the battlefield. It was still not clear how Ntaganda crossed into Rwanda and then proceeded on to the capital supposedly undetected. Foreign diplomats in Kigali suspect he may have had help from high-powered allies inside Kigali - a belief echoed by Congolese on the hectic streets of the capital, Kinshasa "To have somebody who worked for Rwanda for years and years, you don't throw him away like that. You have loyalty," said a Kigali-based diplomat. The prospect of Ntaganda standing in the dock at the ICC may not be particularly comfortable for the Rwandan authorities.
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