Congolese warlord ‘Terminator’ Ntaganda transferred to serve sentence in Belgium

Convicted Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda, dubbed the “Terminator,” has been transferred from the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) to Belgium to start a 30-year sentence for war crimes.

The 49-year-old Ntaganda was convicted by the ICC in 2019 of leading a reign of terror in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the early 2000s. “Mr Bosco Ntaganda was transferred to … the Kingdom of Belgium to serve his sentence of imprisonment at the Leuze-en-Hainaut prison,” the ICC said in a statement. The DRC is a former Belgian colony. Bosco Ntaganda, born in neighboring Rwanda — also a former Belgian colony — was convicted of five counts of crimes against humanity and 13 counts of war crimes, including murder, sexual slavery, rape and the use of child soldiers.

Ntaganda was the first person to be convicted of sexual slavery by the court and this was also the longest sentence ever handed down by the court. Many of the other charges related to massacres of villagers in the mineral-rich Ituri region of Congo. Prosecutors portrayed him as the ruthless leader of ethnic Tutsi revolts amid the civil wars that racked Congo after the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda. Formerly a Congolese army general, Ntaganda became a founding member of the M23 rebel group, which was eventually defeated by Congolese government forces in 2013. Later that year, he became the first-ever suspect to surrender to the ICC, when he walked into the US Embassy in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.