Jean bosco ntaganda biography

We’re sorry, this site is currently experiencing technical difficulties.
Please try again in a few moments.
Exception: forbidden

The list of his alleged crimes is huge - and Congolese people say "The Terminator" is regarded as a man who leads from the front and personally takes part in military operations.

In November 2008, international journalists filmed him commanding and ordering his troops in the village of Kiwanja, 90km (55 miles) north of Goma, where 150 people were massacred in a single day.

He also commanded troops accused of having killed, because of their ethnicity, at least 800 civilians in the town of Mongbwalu, in Ituri district, after his troops took control of the rich gold mines in the area in 2002.

In early April 2012, he defected from the Congolese army - leaving Goma, taking with him up to 600 heavily armed soldiers.

On 11 April, Mr Kabila finally called for his arrest - but he said he would not be handing Ntaganda to the ICC.

Later that year, Ntaganda's M23 rebel group seized Goma before agreeing to withdraw.

Months of fighting forced some 800,000 people to flee their homes.

But in unexplained circumstances and with the rebels under intense international pressure, they split.

Ntaganda lost out to loyalists of his rival, Col Sultani Makenga, and apparently fearing death, he walked into the US embassy in Kigali, from where he was transferred to The Hague, where has now finally faced justice for his crimes.

Bosco Ntaganda, the Congolese rebel M23 leader awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, was a feared commander who ran a vast extortion empire in the mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to UN investigators.

The Congolese government says Ntaganda fled to neighbouring Rwanda in March 2013, along with hundreds of other rebels. He was later to seek sanctuary at the US embassy in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, before his extradition to the ICC.

Ntaganda has been nicknamed “The Terminator” for his penchant for frontline action. He along with Jean-Marie Runiga, political leader  of M23, had been fighting rivals loyal to the group’s military chief, Sultani Makenga.

‘Chain of command’

A former general in the Congolese army, Rwandan-born Ntaganda belongs to the minority Tutsi ethnic group, which is found both in Rwanda and in eastern DRC. The two countries share borders.

Ntaganda is widely believed to have instigated a mutiny by former rebels of the National Congress for the Defence of People (CNDP) who had been integrated in the Congolese army after the March 2009 peace deal but defected in April last year, forming the M23 movement.

A UN report released in November 2012 said the M23’s “de facto chain of command” includes Ntaganda and was being backed by Rwanda. Rwanda rejected the report, saying it was based on hearsay.

The report piled further charges against Ntaganda, including recruiting child soldiers, sex slavery, murder and pillaging.

The ICC issued arrest warrants against Ntaganda in 2006 over crimes said to have been committed in the northeastern Ituri region in 2002-2003.

Underage fighters

Ntaganda was again accused of having used underage fighters in the province of North Kivu in 2012.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in May 2013 that Ntaganda had forcibly recruited at least 149 boys and young men into his group.

HRW quoted one woman from Bir

Congolese war criminal and rebel

Bosco Ntaganda (born 5 November 1973) is a Congolese former rebel leader and convicted war criminal. He was the former military chief of staff of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a rebel that group operated in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during the first phases of the Kivu conflict. He is also a former member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and a veteran of the Rwandan Civil War, as well as an alleged former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC), the military wing of the Union of Congolese Patriots.

Until March 2013, he was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the war crimes of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of fifteen and using them to participate actively in hostilities. Prior to his surrender, Ntaganda had been allegedly involved in the rebel group March 23 Movement, a military group based in eastern areas of the DRC. On 18 March 2013, Ntaganda voluntarily handed himself in to the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda, asking to be transferred to the ICC. On 22 March, he was taken into custody by the ICC. On 8 July 2019, the ICC convicted him of war crimes. He was subsequently sentenced to 30 years for crimes against humanity.

Early life

Ntaganda was born in the small town of Kinigi, situated in the foothills of Rwanda's Virunga mountai