News that Rwanda-backed war crimes suspect Bosco Ntaganda who’s responsible for the massacre of Congo civilians and mass rapes including of children has surrendered in the U.S. embassy in Kigali is welcome.
Hopefully, he will remain healthy and he’ll be transferred to the Hague to face trial at the International Criminal Court, where the proceedings could reveal more about Rwanda’s and Uganda’s role in the genocidal wars of aggression against Congo.
Ntaganda could also implicate many Western companies and even some officials.
Rwanda’s and Uganda’s most recent invasion of Congo was late last year, with the use of M23 –which Rwanda claimed was a Congo rebel army but the U.N. found otherwise– as their Trojan Horse. A United Nations Group of Experts in a damning report showed conclusively how M23’s ultimate commander was actually Rwanda’s minister of defense James Kabarebe.
The U.N. report also showed how both Rwanda and Uganda recruited, trained, and armed the fighters and how Sultan Makenga and Jean Marie Runiga –handpicked by Rwanda’s Kabarebe according to the UN report– were mere nominal leaders with the real decision and command coming from leaders of Rwanda and Uganda.
The invasion of Congo effectively ended after a high profile intervention in which U.S. President Barack Obama personally called President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and urged him to pull out his warriors. Congo’s integrity, sovereignty, national unity, and resources, must be preserved.
In addition to Ntaganda, Nkunda, Makeni and Runiga must also face trial at the Hague for taking part in the atrocities –massacres, mass rapes, other forms of torture– against Congolese civilians.
Ntaganda is a small player. His predecessor, Laurent Nkunda, the previous warlord, who remains harbored in Rwanda as a guest of the government, was also a small player.
The puppet masters are Rwanda’s Kagame and Uganda’s ruler of 27 years Gen. Yoweri K. Museveni.
Between 1997 and 2013, following the numerous invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda, accompanied by plundering of resources and ethnic cleansing in mineral rich regions to depopulate the areas, Congo has lost an estimated 8 million people.
Today Congo remains the most dangerous country in the world for women as rape –of women, men and children– has become a weapon of war of epidemic measures.
After he unleashed violence and terror against the citizens of Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, was ultimately prosecuted by a Special International Tribunal.
Yet for unleashing even far worse crimes against the people of Congo Rwanda’s Kagame and Uganda’s Gen. Museveni still avoid prosecution because both are regarded as U.S. “allies.”
Protection of unindicted war criminals, is the real crime against humanity.
