By Willy Kabwe
KINSHASA, March 17 (Reuters)
- Congo sent a militia leader suspected of ordering the killing of nine U.N. peacekeepers last year to the International Criminal Court on Friday, making him its first prisoner, U.N. and government sources said.
The suspect, Thomas Lubanga, leads the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an ethnic militia now registered as a political party and accused of widespread human rights abuses in eastern Congo's lawless Ituri district.
"Thomas Lubanga left for the ICC this morning," said a U.N. source who declined to be identified.
A source close to the Justice Ministry confirmed Lubanga had left aboard a French military plane. French officials in Paris were unavailable for immediate comment.
The controversial ICC in the Hague 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.
ICC officials in the Hague declined to comment.
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 is firmly opposed to the new court, fearing it will be abused for politically motivated cases against its troops and citizens.
RAPE AND PILLAGE
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.
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 U.N. crackdown after nine Bangladeshi U.N. peacekeepers were killed in February 2005 in the deadliest attack on the world body's biggest peacekeeping force.
U.N. military sources said Lubanga was suspected of ordering the attack from Kinshasa. 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.
With help from 17,000 U.N. troops and police, 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.
(Additional reporting by David Lewis and Niclas Mika)