Thomas Lubanga Dyilo (born 29 December 1960 in Djiba, Ituri) is the founder and former leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an armed militia in Ituri, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Implicated in numerous human rights violations against civilians and the murder of UN peacekeepers, he was arrested on authority of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and is the first person put on trial by the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands.

Biography

During the Second Congo War, Lubanga was a military commander in the Uganda-allied Mouvement de Libération faction of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD-ML). Lubanga formed the UPC with Ugandan assistance, predominantly from the Hema ethnic group, in 2000, at a time when the Ituri Conflict between the Hema and Lendu was well underway. With Ugandan help, the UPC captured the town of Bunia in 2002, in the course of which large numbers of civilians were killed. Over the next several years, the UPC was implicated in the large-scale murder, torture and rape of civilians, in particular ethnic Lendus, and the forced conscription of child soldiers. According to Radio Okapi, run by the United Nations Mission in the Congo, Lubanga had ordered every family in the area under his control to help the UPC by contributing money, a cow or a child.

Following the murder of nine MONUC peacekeepers in 25 March 2005, he and other militia leaders were arrested by Congolese authorities and imprisoned in Makala, Kinshasa. However, it remained unclear if he was to be tried by the ICC or a national tribunal. The DRC had acceded to the ICC instrument, which came into effect on 1 July 2002, and requested that ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo investigate the situation in the east of the country in 2004.

On 10 February 2006, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Lubanga for the war crime of “conscripting and enlisting children under the age of fifteen years and using them to participate actively in hostilities”. The Congolese national authorities transferred Lubanga to ICC custody on 17 March 2006. While the International Criminal Court’s first warrants were issued in July 2005 for the leaders of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, Lubanga is the first person to be actually arrested on authority of an ICC warrant. The first public pre-trial hearing was on 20 March 2006.

His trial was due to begin on 23 June 2008, but it was halted on 13 June 2008 when the court ruled that the Prosecutor’s refusal to disclose potentially exculpatory material had breached Lubanga’s right to a fair trial. The Prosecutor had obtained the evidence from the United Nations and other sources on the condition of confidentiality, but the judges ruled that the Prosecutor had incorrectly applied the relevant provision of the Rome Statute and, as a consequence, “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”. On 2 July 2008, the Court ordered Lubanga’s release; On 21 October 2008, the Appeals Chamber dismissed the appeal of the prosecution and confirmed the decision on the stay on proceedings. The Appeals Chamber also reversed the decision of the Trial Chamber to release Lubanga and has remanded the decision back to the Trial Chamber for further deliberation.

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