The International Criminal Court has sentenced Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga to 14 years in jail for using child soldiers in his rebel army.
“Taking into account all the factors … the court sentences Mr Lubanga to 14 years in prison,” presiding Judge Adrian Fulford told The Hague-based court in an address in which he also took aim at the prosecution in the case.
Lubanga, 51, was convicted in March of war crimes, specifically for using child soldiers in his rebel army in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002-03, in the ICC’s first verdict since it started work a decade ago.
The former militia commander was sentenced on Tuesday by a three-judge bench at a public hearing in The Hague for his part in a war in the central African country which aid groups say has left some 60,000 people dead since 1999.
He had been found guilty of abducting children as young as 11 and forcing them to fight and commit atrocities in the DRC’s northeastern gold-rich Ituri region. During the trial, prosecutors told how young girls served as sex-slaves, while boys were trained to fight.
