A warlord’s trial aims to end impunity in Congo

THE SMALL figures hidden under green cloaks shuffle forward and give their testimony through a voice-distorting funnel. “We were taught how to take a woman by force,” says one boy who was abducted while walking home with his mother. Another says he was recruited at the age of nine and given medicine to enable him to rape women. All are giving evidence in the trial of Ntabo Ntaberi Cheka, a warlord from eastern Congo who faces charges of recruiting child soldiers, mass rape and other atrocities.

The trial has been hailed as a step towards reducing violence and ending impunity for warlords in a part of the Democratic Republic of Congo that is still largely overrun by militias. Yet it also highlights the difficulties of bringing justice to a weak state in which conflict rages.