Bogoro Victim Recounts Traumatic Ordeal

A victim told the International Criminal Court, ICC, last week of the terrifying rape that she suffered on the day that forces, allegedly led by defendants Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, attacked the Ituri town of Bogoro.

Testifying with face and voice distortion, witness 353 said she was forced to be the wife and sexual slave of two soldiers who participated in the attack.

The witness recounted what one soldier told her.

“He said, ‘From now on, you are my wife’, and I thought he wanted to kill me,” the witness said. She added that the soldier then ordered her to go into the bedroom, saying, 'I want your body'.”

After being dragged towards the bed by the soldier, the witness said she began to cry. She was told by the soldier, “If you want to die, continue crying.” The witness was then undressed and raped by the man. The witness reports that, shortly afterwards, the second soldier came and raped her again.

The witness, a Hema who said that she claimed Nande ethnicity to escape persecution, told the court that she assumed the attackers were Lendus who were targeting the Hema population on the day of the Bogoro attack.

The Lendu and Ngiti groups are allegedly represented by the Patriotic Resistance Force, FRPI, and National Integrationist Front, FNI, respectively. Conflicts between the Lendu and Ngiti and the Hema reached a peak at the time of the Bogoro attack on February 24, 2003.

Katanga and Ngudjolo, allegedly the respective leaders of the groups, are charged with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery and rape.

The witness said on the day of the attack she had been in Bogoro, staying at her sister’s house.

“Before daybreak, we heard gunshots while we were asleep,” the witness said. “When I heard the gunshot, I was frightened. Everyone was afraid.”

The witness added that once day broke and there was more visibility, she left the house to assess the situation and briefly recognised the approaching attackers as Ugandan soldiers carrying bladed weapons, who had camouflaged themselves with leaves.

Upon hearing more commotion, the witness went back into the house and hid. Other civilians hiding in the house started to pray when the soldiers banged on the entry door.

The witness recounted that the soldiers shouted in Swahili, “The god that you are praying to is someone you are going to see face-to-face” as they broke down the door and started to kill people.

The soldiers continued, “If you are not Hema, you must leave now”, according to the witness. From the bedroom where the witness was hiding, only three girls were saved after they told the soldiers they were not Hema.

The witness was one of those that was allowed to leave, because she told the soldiers that she was Nande. Outside, one soldier challenged her, saying that she was not a Nande, but a Hema.

Before things escalated, another soldier stopped him and confirmed that the woman was a Nande and was to become the wife of two of the soldiers. So, eventually they dropped their questioning of her ethnicity.

When prosecutor Florence Darques-Lane asked the witness whether she witnessed the killings of the other civilians in the house, she replied, “Yes, I saw it with my own eyes.”

“They (the soldiers) used machetes to kill them,” the witness said. “But, before killing them, they cut their arms off and told the victim to walk and then cut their ears off.”

It was during her escort from the house to a different camp that the two soldiers informed her that she would become their wife. The witness said that the rapes by the two soldiers happened daily for many months.

After one month of being isolated at a camp allegedly located in Geti, the witness ventured into the village and recognised one of the women who had been taken with her from Bogoro. They met and lamented about their plight, with the other woman suggesting they should try to escape the village.

But the witness told the court that she didn’t believe there was any way to escape, fearing that they would be killed if they tried.

The trial is continuing this week.

Anjana Sundaram is an IWPR contributor.