The Hague: Warlord Offers a Defense

[Recursion]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/world/europe/the-hague-warlord-offers-a-defense.html

The Congolese militia leader Bosco Ntaganda, whose trial on war crimes charges opened on Wednesday at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, told his judges on Thursday that “I am not a criminal” but a “trained officer” who always protected civilians. Mr. Ntaganda was allowed to address the court briefly after teams of prosecution and defense lawyers had each delivered their opening presentations on the charges he faces related to attacks in 2002 and 2003 in which villagers in Ituri, a Congolese mining area, were killed or raped. Mr. Ntaganda, 41, who was born in Rwanda, said he had joined the Tutsi forces in Rwanda that put an end to that country’s genocide in 1994, then later moved across the border to Ituri. “The word had gone out to kill all the Tutsis in Ituri, or those who looked like them,” he said. His role was to protect civilians, he said in court. “I ask you to make a distinction between a revolutionary rebel and a criminal.” Earlier, the prosecutor had called him a “notorious and powerful” fighter who enriched himself and used children as his foot soldiers and henchmen and as sexual slaves for his troops. The trial will resume on Sept. 15.