The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
The Hague, Netherlands | AFP | In an unusual move, international war crimes judges will rule Thursday on three appeals cases, including one brought by Congolese warlord Germain Katanga who was ordered to pay his victims $1 million in damages.
Legal proceedings at the International Criminal Court (ICC) are usually lengthy, slow and unwieldy, so it is unheard of to have three judgements handed down in one day.
The court, based in The Hague, opened its doors in 2002 to try the world’s worst crimes in places where governments cannot or will not act.
The other appeals have been brought by former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba, as well as the victims of Malian jihadist Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi.
– Germain Katanga –
Katanga, 39, a former military commander from the restive northeastern Congolese Ituri province, is protesting an order to pay $1 million in damages to his victims.
In the first-ever such reparations, the ICC in March 2017 awarded a symbolic $250 each to almost 300 people caught up in a vicious 2003 attack by Katanga’s militia on their village.
It also awarded collective compensation for projects to help victims with housing, education and “income-generating activities” as well as counselling.
Katanga is now behind bars in the Democratic Republic of Congo completing a 12-year sentence handed down by the ICC in 2014 on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the attack.
He was convicted of supplying weapons to his militia, which went on the rampage in Bogoro, a village in Ituri, shooting and hacking to death with machetes some 200 people.
The ICC’s judges found that the total damage caused by the attack was some $3.7 million. But they also ruled that Katanga, despite being penniless, was “personally liable” for a million dollars in damages.
Katanga’s lawyers appealed the award, saying it did not fairly reflect their client’s role in the crimes and that the interpretation of what constituted a “parent” was too broad when it came to the damages awarded to a child orphan.
Compensation for the loss of a relative should be limited to “close relatives” only, the lawyers argued, asking for Katanga’s liability to be reduced.
– Jean-Pierre Bemba –
In a separate appeal, former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba and four accomplices are protesting convictions for bribing witnesses in Bemba’s main war crimes trial.
Bemba was sentenced to one year in prison to run consecutive to an 18-year sentence imposed in June 2016 for war crimes carried out by his marauding private army in the Central African Republic in 2002 to 2003.
