ICC to rule on DRC warlord Ntaganda case on July 8th

Bosco Ntaganda will soon know his fate.

The International Criminal Court will deliver its judgment on 8 July on the former Congolese warlord, who has been detained in The Hague since 2013 for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Nicknamed “Terminator”, Bosco Ntaganda is accused of recruiting child soldiers and ordering murders, looting and rapes committed by his troops in 2002 and 2003 in Ituri, in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Now 45 years old, the feared former Congolese army general is charged with 13 war crimes and five crimes against humanity, for which he pleaded not guilty in 2015.

According to NGOs, more than 60,000 people have lost their lives in the bloody violence in Ituri in 1999, an unstable and mineral-rich region.

The trial began in 2015 and the prosecution argued that Bosco Ntaganda played a central role in planning the operations of the Union des patriotes congolais and its armed wing, the Forces patriotiques pour la libération du Congo