Congo Militia Chief to Face Trial

The international criminal court gave the go-ahead for its first trial yesterday by ruling that there is sufficient evidence to try a Congolese militia leader for war crimes.

The case before the new court, set up five years ago as the first permanent international court to try crimes against humanity, is a relatively minor one involving the little-known Thomas Lubanga, leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots, who had been captured by the Congolese government.

Prosecutors say that Mr Lubanga, 46, trained children as young as 10 years old to kill, and that he sacrificed their lives in combat in the Ituri region of the east of Congo in 2002-2003. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted. The judge, Claude Jorda of France, said the recruitment "was a systematic practice ... and involved a large number of children".

While relatively minor, the case has symbolic importance, particularly as the court is embroiled in an embarrassing diplomatic tussle over the first indictment it handed down, against the Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, which the Ugandan government wants quashed to encourage a peace deal.