A German court ordered on Friday that a Rwandan Hutu rebel leader, Ignace Murwanashyaka, stand trial for crimes against humanity and war crimes, with hearings expected to begin in May.
Germany alleges he ordered rapes and massacres, mainly at refugee camps on Congolese territory, from January 2008 till November 2009, waging a far-away war from the safety of his comfortable German home.
The Germans arrested him on November 17, 2009 and indicted him in December 2010 for 26 crimes against humanity and 39 war crimes.
Murwanashyaka, 47, will also face a charge of membership in the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu militia.
Prosecutors will produce evidence that he was its president from 2001 onwards. The vice-president, 49, also based in Germany, will face trial with him. France is holding a third Hutu who is alleged to have been another senior leader of the FDLR.
No precise date was set for the trial at the state superior court in Stuttgart, but judges admitted the federal indictment to trial.
War crimes and crimes against humanity were originally defined in Germany, at the 1946 Nuremberg trials of the leading Nazis.
The indictment says Murwanashyaka was to blame for 200 specific killings and numerous rapes by militiamen under his command as well as for using civilians as “human shields” in fighting and conscripting child soldiers in the eastern Congo conflict. - Sapa-dpa