A warlord who led the Congolese Revolutionary Army, dubbed the M23 rebels, is to face the highest number of charges that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has levelled in its history. Bosco Ntaganda, nicknamed the Terminator, is accused of 18 war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, sexual slavery, pillaging and conscripting child soldiers. No one has been charged with so many crimes in the ICC's 21-case history, which includes trials of other Congolese warlords and politicians.
Ntaganda helped to run a series of rebel armies in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo until he gave himself up by walking up to the gates of the US Embassy in neighbouring Rwanda in March 2013. It is still not clear what prompted him to surrender.
The charges confirmed against him yesterday date from the war in the Ituri province in the north-east of Congo that raged between 2002 and 2003, when Ntaganda was the deputy chief of staff of a rebel army called the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo.
As many as 60,000 people died and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes during fighting between the Hema and the Lendu ethnic groups over territory rich in gold.
Ntaganda came to greater prominence more recently when he took over from Laurent Nkunda to lead other eastern Congolese rebellions, most recently as head of the M23 that occupied the region's largest city, Goma, in November 2012.
