Bosco Ntaganda: the Congolese rebel 'Terminator'
KINSHASA (AFP) - Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda, who will appear before International Criminal Court this week, is a feared ex-general with a flare for cowboy hats, pencil moustaches and fine dining.
The rebel, who surprised American officials last week when he turned up at the US embassy in Rwanda and turned himself in, was transferred to The Hague where he will face charges ranging from rape and murder to using child soldiers.
The man nicknamed "The Terminator" and once described as someone who "kills people easily" is said to be a key leader of the M23 rebel group, whose fight against government forces has been terrorising residents of DR Congo's mineral-rich and chronically restive east.
According to the Congolese government, Ntaganda fled across the border into neighbouring Rwanda last weekend with hundreds of other rebels fleeing in-fighting within the M23.
Ntaganda, an ex-general in the Congolese military, is accused of having instigated a mutiny by ex-rebels who had been integrated into the regular army in 2009. They defected in April last year, forming the M23.
A UN report in November said the M23's "de facto chain of command" included Ntaganda and culminated with Rwandan Defence Minister James Kabarebe.
Both the UN and Kinshasa have alleged that Rwanda has been pulling the strings in the M23 and even had men on the ground, an accusation denied by Kigali.
But the UN report submitted further evidence against a Ntaganda, who is wanted by the ICC on a grim list of charges including recruiting child soldiers, sex slavery, murder and pillaging.
The ICC issued arrest warrants against Ntaganda in 2006 over crimes committed in the northeastern Ituri region in 2002-2003.
He was again accused of having recruited underage fighters in the province of North Kivu in the M23's 2012 rebellion.
Human Rights Watch said in May that Ntaganda had forcibly recruited at least 149 boys and young men into his militia.
In an anecdote showing Ntaganda's willingness to get his hands dirty, one woman from Birambizo in North Kivu told HRW that Ntaganda himself visited her village to recruit.
"He asked us to give our children, our students, to him to fight. He came to our village himself," the woman said.
In the words of a child soldier who testified against Ntaganda in The Hague, he is known as someone who "kills people easily".
Born in 1973 in Rwanda but brought up in DR Congo, the imposing Ntaganda -- he is over six feet tall and has a penchant for pencil moustaches and leather cowboy-class hats -- has enjoyed a life of fine dining and freedom despite the ICC warrant.
"Ntaganda has boldly walked around the restaurants and tennis courts of Goma flaunting his impunity like a medal of honour while engaging in ruthless human rights abuses," HRW senior Africa researcher Anneke Van Woudenberg said.
Ntaganda is a keen tennis player, and loves jogging and surfing the Internet, according to his lawyer Antoine Mahamba Kasiwa.
According to UN investigators, he has managed to amass considerable wealth by running a large extortion empire in North Kivu, manning rogue checkpoints and taxing the area's many mines.
One report said he once earned $15,000 a week from just one border crossing.
In May, a 25-tonne arms cache was found on Ntaganda's farm in Masisi, North Kivu, that included mortars, rifles and small arms.
Ntaganda had fled Rwanda to eastern DR Congo as an adolescent following attacks on his fellow Tutsis.
In 1990, in his late teens, he joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which was based in Uganda at the time and which put an end to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, under current President Paul Kagame's leadership.
Since then Ntaganda has alternated between fighting in the national army and rebellions, including in the five-year DR Congo war that claimed at least two million lives and ended in 2003.
Ntaganda is accused of several assassinations when he was second-in-command of a government sweep to flush out militias from the eastern region, during his time as a general in the regular army.