Bosco Ntaganda was born on 5 November 1973 and is a convicted war criminal and the former military chief of staff of the National Congress for the Defense of the People, an armed militia group operating in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
20 Facts About Bosco Ntaganda
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Bosco Ntaganda is a former member of the Rwandan Patriotic Army and allegedly a former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, the military wing of the Union of Congolese Patriots.
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On 18 March 2013, Bosco Ntaganda voluntarily handed himself into the US Embassy in Rwanda, asking to be transferred to the ICC.
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Bosco Ntaganda was sentenced to 30 years for crimes against humanity.
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Bosco Ntaganda was born in the small town of Kinigi, situated in the foothills of Rwanda's Virunga mountain range in the Musanze District.
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When he was a teenager, Bosco Ntaganda fled to Ngungu-Masisi in eastern DRC after attacks on his fellow ethnic Tutsis started taking place in Rwanda.
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Bosco Ntaganda attended secondary school there but did not graduate; at the age of 17 he joined Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels in southern Uganda.
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Bosco Ntaganda fought with the Rwandan Patriotic Army in the early 1990s and participated in the overthrow of the Hutu-led Rwandan government in 1994 following the Rwandan genocide.
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Bosco Ntaganda subsequently joined the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, the military wing of the Union of Congolese Patriots, and became its chief of military operations.
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In January 2005, Bosco Ntaganda was offered a position as a general in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of a peace process, but he refused the offer.
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The CNDP has since been incorporated into the regular Congolese armed forces and Bosco Ntaganda was acting as a General in the army, despite being wanted by the ICC.
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Congolese authorities reported that on both occasions Bosco Ntaganda had gone there to attend a burial, having sought official authorization to do so from his military hierarchy and from immigration authorities.
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Rwandan officials said that they have no objections to Bosco Ntaganda crossing the border.
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Bosco Ntaganda derived profits from mineral exploitation at Nyabibwe, through his alliance with Colonel Saddam Ringo.
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At Rubaya, Bosco Ntaganda gained large revenues from taxation levied by "parallel" mine police.
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Bosco Ntaganda ordered his troops to intervene on behalf of Krall Metal Congo at Lueshe.
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On 22 August 2006, a Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC found that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Bosco Ntaganda bore individual criminal responsibility for war crimes committed by the FPLC between July 2002 and December 2003, and issued a warrant for his arrest.
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Bosco Ntaganda was charged with the war crimes of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of fifteen and using them to participate actively in hostilities.
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On 18 March 2013, Bosco Ntaganda handed himself in to the US embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, where he requested transfer to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
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At his first appearance before the ICC in the Hague on 26 March 2013, Bosco Ntaganda denied his guilt.