20 Mar The ICC’s First Prisoner
The ICC held a hearing for Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, its first arrestee, today. He has a provisional defence counsel and will get a full hearing in June. According to the BBC, Lubanga is a rebel warlord leading a group battling rivals from the Lendu ethnic group, partly for control of large deposits of gold in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Lubanga appears to be a good defendant for the ICC to start with. He is accused of very serious war crimes including murder, torture and rape, and also mutilating victims. He is also has no obvious base of political support and his conviction should cause little political friction anywhere outside of the DR Congo. Of course, there are elections coming up in the DR Congo and Lubanga’s detention might or might not undermine the effectiveness of those elections by removing an important (albeit apparently criminal) political player.
Actually, as can be seen in the arrest warrant, which is available (apparently only in French at the moment) at http://www.icc-cpi.int/library/cases/ICC-01-04-01-06-2_French.pdf, he himself is “only” accused, under Art. 8 (b) (xxvi) and Art. 8 (e) (vii) of the Statute, of “conscripting and enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into … armed forces …” and “using them to participate actively in hostilities”
In a way, this might make Lubanga look even more like the ICC version of Dusko Tadic (i.e. relatively “small fish”).
On the other hand, it might just be that the OTP is trying to send a signal about the breadth of criminal behavior that the ICC is going to address, especially given the frequent use of child soldiers in this conflict.