Vol. 8 Issue 7 - Public International Law & Policy Group

"Have I said that Bosco Ntaganda has been pardoned?" he asked, without detailing what fate
awaited the former rebel leader.
Ntaganda's defection dealt a massive blow to one of Kinshasa's toughest adversaries in the
eastern Kivu provinces, renegade general Laurent Nkunda, who was arrested in neighboring
Rwanda on January 22.
Since then, CNDP forces have started rallying to the national DRC army, the FARDC, which
is engaged in joint operations with Rwandan troops and with UN logistic support to quell
strife in the region.
When it came to Nkunda, Luzolo said that his extradition from Rwanda was in hand and said
that he would be tried within the DRC, but gave no precise details of when and how except
that the renegade leader would get a regular trial with a right to defense.
International watchdog Human Rights Watch on February 5 urged Kabila to hand over
Ntaganda to the ICC, a court set up in 2002 for try cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes
against humanity.
The eastern provinces of the vast central African country, which has great mineral wealth,
have been particularly scarred by successive conflicts before and after a 1998-2003 war that
embroiled more than half a dozen African armies, with Rwanda then fighting Kinshasa.
A long peace process began before the end of the war, but aroused concern in human rights
and judicial circles when former war crimes suspects on all sides in the DRC appear to
benefit from a waiver of justice on being integrated into the new national army.
Rwandan Hutu rebel commanders surrender
Aimable Twahirwa, Agence France Presse, 2/13/09
Top commanders from Rwanda's Hutu rebel group in the eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo have surrendered to a joint military offensive by Kigali and Kinshasa, the Rwandan
army said Friday.
The operation's command simultaneously announced that 40 other members of the group, the
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), had been killed in an air raid on
Thursday.
The Rwandan army said Lieutenant Colonel Edmond Ngarambe, the FDLR's spokesman,
turned himself in with other rebel fighters on Wednesday, while the government-run Radio
Rwanda aired an appeal purportedly read by Ngarambe urging his forces to lay down their
arms.
"Lieutenant Colonel Michel Habimana (Ngarambe's real name) has surrendered to the forces
of the joint operation," army spokesman Jill Rutaremara told AFP.