Prosecutors of the Congolese warlord convicted of using child soldiers in his rebel army at the end of the Second Congo War, requested a 30-year prison term from the International Criminal Court on Wednesday.
“The gravity of the crime defines the gravity of the sentence. In a domestic prosecution each separate act committed against a child would call for a serious punishment,” ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement.
Thomas Lubanga, 51, was convicted in March of war crimes in the ICC’s first verdict since it first started more than a decade ago.
ICC prosecutors are considering other legal actions against Lubanga for his responsibility as head of the militia who personally oversaw the recruitment of the child soldiers.
“They were trained to kill and to rape. The children were launched into battle zones where they were instructed to kill everyone regardless of whether they were men, women, or children, all were the enemy,” Ocampo said.
Some of the children who were abducted were as young as 11 and mainly fought and committed abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s northeastern region between 2002 and 2003.
Lubanga was also said to be allied with Bosco Ntaganda, the head of another rebel group, who is wanted by the ICC for war crimes. Ntaganda is still at large and free in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
During his trial, Lubanga said he was innocent and did not condone or order the use of child soldiers.
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