afrol News, 17 June - International Criminal Court (ICC) might drop charges against Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga accused of recruiting child soldiers, after discovering that prosecutors failed to reveal evidence that might acquit the warlord.

ICC has announced the trial will remain suspended unless the stay imposed on proceedings on Friday is lifted.

The Hague-based court will decide whether or not Mr Lubango is released on 24 June and the trial was to have begun next week Monday.

He is founder and leader of Union of Congolese Patriots (UCP) in Ituri region of eastern DRC. ICC judges said withheld 200 documents of evidence, were elementary features of his right to a fair trial.

The Congolese warlord was arrested in 2006, accused of recruiting and using child soldiers in DR Congo during the country's bloody five-year civil war, which ended in 2003. The case would be first ever to come to trial before ICC.

"The trial process has been ruptured to such a degree that it is now impossible to piece together the constituent elements of a fair trial," the judgement stated.

In a statement, prosecution had argued that children had been snatched as they walked to school and forced to fight for Mr Lubanga's ethnic Hema militia against their Lendu rivals.

The child soldiers were later instructed, "to kill all Lendu including men, women and children", the prosecution statement said, based on testimony from some of the children.

The accused has denied all charges laid against him. His lawyers said he was only trying to end the clash, adding that international community is punishing him for refusing to give mining concessions in areas he controlled to foreign firms.

The ICC was set up in 2002 as the world's first permanent war crimes court. It was designed to end the need for various ad hoc war crimes courts, including chambers created to deal with war crimes committed in former Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda.

At least four million people are believed to have died during five years deadly DRC conflict.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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