The High Court Chamber for International Crimes (ICC) once again postponed the substantive hearing of the case involving two former leaders of the FDLR militia group. FLDR is a French acronym for Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda and the two commanders are Lt Col. Ignace Nkaka also known as La Forge Fils Bazeye and Lt Col Jean-Pierre Nsekanabo. Nkaka was the spokesperson of the outfit that is based in DR Congo while Nsekanabo was its head of intelligence before they were both arrested by Congolese security at the end of 2018 and extradited to Rwanda mid-last year. The postponement is the second in a row by the Nyanza-based high court chamber. The first trial was postponed in December last year as Beata Dukeshinema who was Nsekanabo’s lawyer threw in the towel saying that her conscience did not allow her to continue representing him owing to the crimes he stands accused. Court then pushed the trial to give time to Nsekanabo to get another lawyer. In during the hearing on Thursday January 30, both suspects had their lawyers with them: Milton Nkuba representing Nkaka, and Elias Habimfura representing Nsekanabo. However, Nkuba asked court to give them time to look into the new evidence fed into his client’s file by prosecution, while Habimfura also requested to be afforded more time to look into Nsekanabo’s file since he (Habimfura) he had only taken him on as his client ‘a few days back.’ On its part, prosecution said that there were no new information in the suspects’ files, but they however admitted that hitches in the online case management system might have posed challenges to the defence lawyers in accessing the files in time. The ICC judges accepted to postpone the substantive hearing to March 10, during which all parties should come ready to start the case. The two men were arrested in December 2018 for the border between DR Congo and Uganda. During their initial hearing, they said they were coming from a meeting in the Ugandan capital Kampala, where they had been to a meeting with leaders of another terrorist group, Rwanda National Congress. The meeting had been called by Ugandan state minister for regional cooperation, Philemon Mateke, who also chaired it and it aimed at concretising the plans for the two groups to work together.
