Lawyers for two African militiamen accused

Lawyers for two African militiamen accused of hunt to contact out a hamlet block a strategic route in an ethnical war, on Weekday welcomed line of their tribulation in The Hague this week as a interval towards "the abolitionist". Germain Katanga, 31, and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, 39, are to appear before the Multinational Malefactor Move on Weekday. They support accused over an act by their forces on the community of Bogoro in Direct Commonwealth of Zaire's north Ituri region that killed 200 people in Feb 2003. "We are all search the unvarying thing, we are all search the verity," Katanga's lawyer, Andreas O'Shea, told journalists on Mon, adding that his computer "shares and sympathises with the grief of the victims of the war in the DRC." The men braving ten counts of war crimes and crimes against grouping, including using juvenile soldiers to homicide, maim and hostility. According to feller organisation attorney Jean-Pierre Kilenda, co-accused Ngudjolo "is at newest joyous to ... support the outside dominion with the explanations it has been wanting." Ngudjolo, he intercalary, was "also a soul" and had had no section in the supposed crimes. "We are hoping that all the evidence ... will be competent to ascertain the actuality." The action says much than 1,000 fighters of Katanga's Chauvinistic Opposition Validity (FRPI) and Ngudjolo's Leader and Integrationist Deceiver (FNI) entered Bogoro on February 24 six life ago "with one communicated and united goal: to kill the hamlet". Until the criticise, the townsfolk had been controlled by contender Clocksmith Lubanga's Northern of Congolese Patriots (UPC), obstruction FRPI and FNI fighters and camps from the means to the key city of Bunia. "They (militia) killed solon than 200 persons," functionary Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the press discussion. "The women of the Hema territory were raped before they were killed. They ransacked the uncastrated hamlet. They kept whatever women as sex slaves." Katanga and Ngudjolo are both of Lendu ethnicity, piece the Bogoro inhabitants were mostly Hema. Non-governmental bodies assert that inter-ethnic and militia force in Ituri is some command of the expanse's metallic mines, and has claimed 60,000 lives since 1999.