The Hague: Two Congolese militiamen accused of seeking to wipe out a village blocking a strategic route in an ethnic war, enter the dock in The Hague on Tuesday for the International Criminal Court's second trial.
Germain Katanga, 31, and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, 39, stand accused over an attack by their forces on the village of Bogoro in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri region that killed 200 people in February 2003.
They deny guilt on 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including charges of murder, rape, sexual slavery, using child soldiers, attacking civilians, pillaging and destruction of property.
The prosecution alleges that more than a thousand fighters of Katanga's Patriotic Resistance Force (FRPI) and Ngudjolo's Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) entered Bogoro on February 24 six years ago "with one communicated and agreed goal: to erase the village of Bogoro".
"The attack was indiscriminate and systematic," said Jean-Louis Gilissen, legal representative to a group of former child soldiers alleged to have taken part in the attack, and given victim status by the court.
He said that fighters entered the town, controlled by rival Thomas Lubanga's Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), armed with rifles and machetes -- moving from the perimeter to the centre which housed a UPC military camp.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, November 22, 2009, 10:16