THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Judges will decide Monday whether an alleged Congolese militia leader becomes the first war crimes suspect sent for trial at the International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.
Prosecutors say Thomas Lubanga's militias plucked children off the streets as they walked to and from school and forced them to fight and die in the Congo's brutal rebel conflict. His lawyer says he is an innocent patriot who sought to end plundering of resources and bring peace to his mineral-rich region.
The Hague-based court's top prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has said he believes the case will be approved and that a trial could begin as soon as the second half of this year.
Lubanga faces three charges of recruiting and using child soldiers in a bloody conflict in the Ituri region of eastern Congo in 2002-2003. He faces a maximum life sentence if sent to trial and convicted.
It is a landmark case for the ICC, which was formally established in 2002 to prosecute suspects believed most responsible for atrocities around the world.
Lubanga was arrested in March 2005 by authorities in Kinshasa as part of a crackdown aimed at restoring order to the Congo's Ituri region in the aftermath of the slaying and mutilation of nine U.N. peacekeepers there. A rival warlord has been arrested in the Congo and charged in the peacekeeper killings.
Lubanga was transferred in March last year to the ICC's detention unit inside a Dutch jail near the North Sea coast last year. He is the only suspect in the court's custody.
He also is the first person to be charged at an international court with using child soldiers, and prosecutors intend the case to send a message around the world that arming and using children to wage wars will not be tolerated.
The United Nations estimates that some 300,000 child soldiers are involved in conflicts around the world.
Human rights groups have welcomed the case, but criticized the court for not bringing more charges against Lubanga, the former leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots, known by its French acronym UPC.
Thousands of people were killed in fighting that continued in Ituri even after the country's 1998-2002 civil war ended. Moreno-Ocampo hopes to complete a second investigation into atrocities in the Congo later this year.
The judges will decide whether to confirm charges against Lubanga and order him to stand trial based on a preliminary hearing of evidence last November.
If the panel decides not to confirm the charges against Lubanga, he could go free or the judges could order prosecutors to provide more evidence against him or amend the charges.
At the hearing, prosecutors alleged that boys and girls -- some as young as 10 -- were snatched off the streets by armed men and forced into Lubanga's camps, where they were trained to handle firearms and frequently drugged with marijuana to calm their fears.
Three boys and three girls, one only 10 years old at the time, are cited in the charges. A 14-year-old girl was shot dead by Lubanga's forces after fleeing from a camp and being recaptured, a witness told the hearing.
But Lubanga's Belgian attorney Jean Flamme said his client was a man of peace who upset the Congolese government and opponents in neighboring Uganda by advocating sharing Congo's vast mineral wealth.
