Intermediary Denies Coaching Witnesses

An intermediary of prosecution investigators at the International Criminal Court, ICC, has denied that he told children to give false testimony in the trial of alleged Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga.

At the start of his testimony last week, intermediary 321 told the court that he never asked the children to lie about their ages, the villages they came from or their association with the armed wing of the Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC, which Lubanga is alleged to have led.

Intermediary 321 took the stand at the request of judges, after a number of defence witnesses implicated him in various acts of corrupting evidence.

Some witnesses claimed that this intermediary bribed individuals who were never child soldiers to lie to investigators that they were former members of the UPC.

Responding to a question from prosecuting lawyer Nicole Samson, intermediary 312 said, "I already knew that they were children who had been part of the war and I could not have any influence on them."

Samson then asked, "Did you encourage any of the children to say that they had been forcibly recruited by Thomas Lubanga?"

The intermediary replied that he had no reason to ask the children to tell lies about the way they became fighters for the UPC.

He said that, long before the children met the investigators, they had filled in forms in which they stated the names of their parents, the villages they originated from and how they became members of the armed groups. Some of these forms were not related to their participation in the trial but to their reunification with their families, he said.

"Each child had explained how they had become a member of the army," he said. "There was [no reason] for me to tell children to say that they had been forcibly recruited, and I didn't know what they were going to be asked."

Lubanga is charged with recruiting, conscripting and using child soldiers in armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 2002 and 2003.

Lubanga's defence maintain that all eight prosecution witnesses who claimed to have been UPC child soldiers never actually served with the group.

The defence says it is about to file an application for judges to consider dismissing the case against Lubanga because of the alleged abuse of process perpetuated by the intermediaries.

Intermediary 321 worked with a non-government organisation which helped former child soldiers to leave the military and return to their families. He explained that, in the course of his work, he dealt with several former child soldiers who served in three military groups. The intermediary is expected to continue his testimony next week.

Besides intermediary 321, two other intermediaries and three OTP investigators will also testify about the alleged corruption of evidence.

IWPR's weekly updates of the Thomas Lubanga trial are produced in cooperation with the Open Society Justice Initiative of the Open Society Institute, OSI. Daily coverage of the trial can be found at http://www.lubangatrial.org/.