Fugitive Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda walked into the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda on Monday and asked to be transferred to the International Criminal Court, where he faces war crimes charges racked up during years of rebellion. By surrendering in Kigali, where an embassy official said staff were “shocked” by his sudden arrival, Ntaganda ended a career that saw him fight as a rebel and government soldier on both sides of the Rwanda-Congo border during nearly 20 years of conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region. Ntaganda’s whereabouts had been unknown after hundreds of his fighters fled into Rwanda or surrendered to U.N. peacekeepers at the weekend following their defeat by a rival faction of M23 rebels in the mineral-rich eastern Congo. “He specifically asked to be transferred to the ICC in the Hague,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington. “We are currently consulting with a number of governments, including the Rwandan government, in order to facilitate his request.” Ntaganda faces charges of conscripting child soldiers, murder, ethnic persecution, sexual slavery and rape during the 2002-3 conflict in the Ituri district of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. But according to a U.N. panel of experts, Ntaganda, nicknamed “The Terminator”, was most recently a leader of the M23 rebellion, which has pursued a year-long insurgency that embarrassed Kinshasa and U.N. peacekeepers by seizing the capital of North Kivu province, Goma, in November.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/18/us-rwanda-warcrimes-usa-idUSBRE92H0UK20130318
Diplomatic Briefing 
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