Congo hands first suspect to Hague war crimes court

AMSTERDAM, Mar 17 (Reuters) A Congolese militia leader accused of conscripting and enlisting children aged under 15 for warfare became the first suspect sent for trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the court said today.

Thomas Lubanga Dyilo left Congo aboard a French military plane and is expected to arrive in The Hague later. He will be taken to a temporary detention centre in the Dutch city.

''Thomas Lubanga must answer for war crimes,'' the ICC said in a statement.

Lubanga, leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an ethnic militia now registered as a political party, stands accused of widespread human rights abuses in eastern Congo's lawless Ituri district.

The controversial ICC was set up as the first permanent global war crimes court to try individuals, and Lubanga is the first suspect to be delivered into its custody.

The ICC issued its first warrants last year for five leaders of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which also operates in northeast Congo. It has launched investigations into war crimes in Congo and Sudan's Darfur region.

The United States opposes the new court, fearing it will be abused for politically motivated cases against its troops and citizens.

ONLY THE BEGINNING Lubanga, 45, stands accused of three counts of war crimes carried out from July 2002, but could face more charges.

Senior UN officials said earlier that Lubanga, who is due to appear in court next week, was suspected of ordering the February 2005 killing of nine United Nations peacekeepers, but the court's arrest warrant made no mention of the incident.

''This is not the end of the investigation into the UPC and into the Congo. The investigation is sequential. We are doing one at a time and this is just the beginning,'' a spokesman for ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said. ''The prosecutor expects to raise other charges at a later stage.'' Other militia leaders have already been arrested on suspicion of killing the Bangladeshi UN soldiers.

Lubanga's UPC, dominated by the Hema ethnic group, stands accused of widespread human rights violations in Ituri, where a range of foreign and local militias have raped, looted and murdered civilians during and since Congo's 1998-2003 war.

The ICC said there ''were reasonable grounds to believe Lubanga had committed the following war crimes: conscripting and enlisting children under the age of 15 years and using them to participate actively in hostilities''.

Lubanga was arrested in March 2005 in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, where he had moved more than a year earlier and registered the UPC as a political party.

His arrest was part of a UN crackdown after the deadly attack on its peacekeepers the previous month.

UN military sources said Lubanga was suspected of ordering the attack. Other militia leaders also accused of involvement have been arrested and detained in Kinshasa.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed during years of militia violence in Ituri, one of Congo's most violent areas.

In all, the war and subsequent militia violence is estimated to have killed 4 million Congolese, mostly through hunger and disease caused by the conflict.

Helped by 17,000 UN troops and police -- the world body's biggest peacekeeping force -- the former Belgian colony the size of Western Europe is racing to organise its first national democratic elections in four decades on June 18.

But it faces huge problems with continued militia fighting, chaos and dissent in the new national army and difficulties in organising voting in places with no roads or communications after decades of war and mismanagement.

REUTERS VJ RAI0115