A Congolese warlord known as "the Terminator" who is accused of murder, rape and other atrocities arrived at the International Criminal Court's jail in the Netherlands early on Saturday, the court said.

Bosco Ntaganda, who walked off the street and gave himself up at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali in a surprise move on Monday, was flown in a private jet from the Rwandan capital to The Hague after being handed over to the court's custody.

After a 15-year career that spanned a series of Rwandan-backed rebellions in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, he will appear in court on Tuesday for the first hearing in a process that could lead to him being put on trial for war crimes.

Ntaganda was most recently a commander in the M23 rebel movement, but his position weakened after the group split in two.

His removal from the conflict creates an opportunity to secure a peace agreement to end the year-old rebellion in a region dogged by conflicts.

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Ntaganda's surrender was the first time an ICC suspect had voluntarily handed themselves over to be in the court's custody.

He asked stunned U.S. officials at the embassy to be transferred to the court, where he will face charges of recruiting child soldiers, murder, ethnic persecution, sexual slavery and rape during the 2002-3 conflict in northeastern Congo's gold mining Ituri district.

His whereabouts had been unknown after hundreds of his fighters fled into Rwanda or surrendered to U.N. peacekeepers last weekend following their defeat by a rival faction of M23 rebels in the mineral-rich eastern Congo.

"Bosco thought his choice was the ICC or probable death," said Jason Stearns of the Rift Valley Institute.

Victory for victims
Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said Ntaganda flew out of Kigali in the custody of ICC officials following cooperation between the Rwandan, U.S. and Dutch governments.

A Reuters witness had seen a blacked-out U.S. Embassy vehicle under police escort drive along the perimeter of Kigali international airport. Shortly after, a private jet took off.

His first courtroom appearance, to confirm his identity, will be on Tuesday morning, the court said in a statement.

With an arrest warrant hanging over him, Ntaganda and his backers were seen as an obstacle to peace between the M23 and the Congolese government that the rival faction had shown signs of warming to.

"Bosco's arrest won't bring peace to the eastern Congo, but Bosco's arrest does spell a victory in the battle against impunity and the dismantling of one of the barriers to a peace process in the country," Stearns said.

The trial of Rwandan-born Ntaganda could prove an embarrassment to the Rwandan government, which has denied charges by a United Nations panel that it backs the M23 rebels.

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda might seek to add additional charges related to rebellions that followed the alleged Ituri crimes, analysts said.

Wars in Congo have killed about five million people in the past decade and a half, and many eastern areas are still afflicted by violence from a number of rebel groups despite a decade-long U.N. peacekeeping mission.

"Bosco Ntaganda's arrival in The Hague will be a major victory for victims of atrocities in eastern Congo," said Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, international justice advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

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Bosco Ntaganda, a former rebel militia leader known as 'The Terminator' and wanted for suspected war crimes in Congo, has given himself up at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali in neighboring Rwanda, Reuters reported Monday.

"We have learned today that Bosco Ntaganda entered Rwanda and surrendered to (the) U.S. Embassy in Kigali," Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo posted to Twitter on Monday.

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The surrender was confirmed by U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Ntaganda, leader of the Congelese rebel group M23, is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

News site Al-Jazeera described him as a "feared military commander who runs a vast extortion empire in the mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)."

Human Rights Watch said it had been documenting atrocities by troops under Ntaganda’s command for over 10 years. It said Ntaganda crimes include recruiting and using child soldiers, murder, rape and sexual slavery, and persecution.

"I can confirm that this morning Bosco Ntaganda, and ICC indictee and leader of one of the M23 factions, walked into U.S. Embassy Kigali," Nuland told reporters. "He specifically asked to be transferred to the ICC in the Hague. We are currently consulting with a number of governments, including the Rwandan government, in order to facilitate his request."

Neither Rwanda nor the United States has an obligation to hand Ntaganda over to The Hague-based ICC since they are not parties to the Rome Statute that established the court.

Ntaganda’s rebels have been fleeing into Rwanda or surrendering to UN peacekeepers in recent days after being defeated by a rival faction, Reuters reported.

Recent fighting in DRC, including infighting within M23, has sent thousands of Congolese civilians fleeing to neighboring Uganda.

 

This story was originally published on Mon Mar 18, 2013 1:53 PM EDT

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo -- Rebel fighters, singing and brandishing weapons, pulled out of Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern border city of Goma on Saturday, raising hopes regional peace efforts could advance negotiations to end the insurgency.

The rebel withdrawal from Goma on Lake Kivu, a strategic hub in the country's war-scarred eastern borderlands, was agreed in a deal brokered by presidents of the Great Lakes states under Uganda's leadership a week ago.

Goma's fall on November 20 to the Tutsi-led M23 rebel movement which routed United Nations-backed government forces triggered a diplomatic scramble to prevent a wider escalation of the eight-month-old rebellion in the conflict-prone region.

The rebels had said they would fight to topple Congo's President Joseph Kabila and march on the capital Kinshasa, 1,000 miles to the west. U.N. experts accuse Rwanda and Uganda of supporting the revolt, a charge both strongly deny.

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In the center of Goma, blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers from Uruguay in white armored vehicles watched as camouflage-clad M23 fighters scrambled on to the back of flatbed trucks with battered suitcases and other belongings before driving off.

"We are leaving today," M23's military chief Colonel Sultani Makenga told reporters.

Residents lined the streets leading out of the city to watch as the truckloads of singing rebels drove out, heading for previously agreed positions 13 miles north of Goma from where M23 launched its lightning offensive two weeks ago.

On the dusty road by the U.N.-controlled airport, about 100 rebels trudged out of town on foot. Some of the trucks leaving Goma carried crates of captured munitions and military supplies.

Makenga, who faces a U.N.-imposed assets freeze and travel ban for leading the revolt, said the M23 withdrawal was in response to a request from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

"We are leaving for peace," Makenga said, following a brief ceremony in which a squad of around 40 M23 fighters, wearing mottled green camouflage uniforms, peaked caps and black gumboots, first paraded and then sang and danced.

If there are no hitches, a full rebel withdrawal from lakeside Goma, which lies in sight of the towering Mount Nyiragongo volcano, will provide breathing space for possible follow-up negotiations between the rebels and Kabila.

Humanitarian agencies say hundreds of people have been injured and thousands displaced by the recent fighting.

The Congolese president has said he is willing to listen to the rebels' grievances, but there is considerable mistrust between the two sides and Kabila faces pressure from within his own army to pursue a military solution rather than talks.

PhotoBlog: Rebels start to pull out

"If Kabila provokes us, we will come back," Makenga said. "If he wants peace there will be peace, if he wants war, there will be war," he added.

Uganda's junior foreign minister, Asuman Kiyingi, told Reuters Kampala would encourage the two sides to talk. "Now that M23 has withdrawn, it's important that the Kinshasa government also addresses the grievances of these people (M23)," he said

Goma lies at the heart of Congo's eastern borderlands which have suffered nearly two decades of conflict stoked by long-standing ethnic and political enmities and fighting over the region's rich resources of gold, tin, tungsten and coltan. The latter is a precious metal used to make mobile phones.

Some Goma residents jeered as the trucks carrying the departing rebels lurched through the dusty streets. Some of the vehicles stopped to fill up with petrol, while others were held up temporarily by teeming traffic.

A military observer from Rwanda, one of several defense representatives from neighboring states who watched the withdrawal, said it was going ahead without problems.

"It is all very smooth," he said, asking not to be named.

On Friday, the pullback plan appeared to run into problems, including a dispute over abandoned army supplies the insurgents wanted to take with them.

But this incident did not appear to impede the pullout, which U.N. officials expected would be completed on Saturday.

Congolese policemen who had been brought in to help keep order as the rebels left were also visible in the streets.

In the face of evidence supplied by U.N. experts about Rwandan involvement in the rebellion, a number of Western donors have frozen aid to Kigali. Rwandan President Paul Kagame has angrily rejected the charges against his government.

In the latest move, Britain, Rwanda's largest bilateral donor, said on Friday it was withholding 21 million pounds ($34 million) of budget support.

Rwanda has twice invaded its western neighbor Congo over the past two decades, at one point sparking a conflict dubbed "Africa's World War" that drew in several countries.

It has justified its interventions by arguing it was forced to act against hostile Rwandan Hutu fighters who fled to Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide that saw 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed by Hutu soldiers and militia.

The M23 rebels said they took up arms over what they cited as the government's failure to respect a March 23, 2009, peace agreement that envisaged their integration into the army.

They have since broadened the scope of their movement, which takes its name from the peace deal date, declaring their aim to "liberate" the entire Central African nation and oust Kabila.

Aid agencies say more than 5 million people have died from conflict, hunger or disease in Congo since 1998.

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GOMA -- Rebels widely believed to be backed by Rwanda claimed control of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo Tuesday, parading through this frontier city of a million people past United Nations peacekeepers who did nothing to stop them.

Hundreds of fighters from the M23 group entered Goma after days of clashes with U.N.-backed Congolese soldiers that forced tens of thousands of residents to flee.

A senior U.N. source told Reuters that international peacekeepers had given up defending the city after the Congolese troops left.

"There is no army left in the town, not a soul... Once they were in the town what could we do? It could have been very serious for the population," he said, asking not to be named.

The rebellion has aggravated tensions between Congo and its neighbor Rwanda, which Kinshasa's government says is orchestrating the insurgency as a means of grabbing the chaotic region's mineral wealth.

Rwanda denies the assertion.

However, Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende ruled out talks with the rebels, suggesting they were proxies of the Rwandan government.

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"We will continue (resisting) until Rwanda has been pushed out of our country ... There will be absolutely no negotiations with M23," Mende said, adding that Kinshasa would talk only directly with Rwanda.

Rights group blasts Rwanda winning seat on UN Security Council

U.N. experts say Rwanda, a small but militarily capable neighbor that has intervened in Congo repeatedly over the past 18 years, is behind the M23 revolt.

Congo's mineral wealth, including diamonds, gold, copper and coltan, a metal used in mobile phones, has inflamed the conflict and little has been spent on developing a country the size of western Europe.

Goma's capture will also be an embarrassment for President Joseph Kabila, who won re-election late last year in polls that provoked widespread riots in Kinshasa and that international observers said were marred by fraud.

Hague war crimes court to finds Congo warlord guilty

Congolese state television reported on Tuesday that Kabila, who has made few public comments on the rebellion in recent weeks, is travelling to Uganda, the mediator in the conflict with the eastern rebels.

In the capital Kinshasa, security forces used tear gas and fired shots in the air to disperse a few hundred youths protesting the fall of Goma in a central square. Residents in Congo's second city, Kisangani, attacked Kabila's local party headquarters in frustration.

Hundreds of M23 fighters accompanied their leader Sultani Makenga into Goma, where they were greeted by cheering crowds shouting "welcome" and "thank you."

"We've taken the town, it's under control," said Colonel Vianney Kazarama, a spokesman for the rebels. "We're very tired, we're going to greet our friends now."

Congo crisis exacerbated by heavy rains

On Monday, Kazarama had denied the rebels would take the city.

The U.N. has about 6,700 peacekeeping troops in North Kivu, including some 1,400 troops in and around Goma, and the mission had previously promised to defend the town.

On Tuesday afternoon, armored U.N. vehicles continued to circulate in the town offering help to residents, but troops did not try to block the rebels. No government troops were to be seen.

Before the rebels seized the city, streams of residents headed for the nearby border with Rwanda. More than 50,000 people who fled fighting earlier this year have abandoned refugee camps around Goma.

"With the war, we're suffering so much, I've never seen anything like this in my life," a woman who gave her name only as Aisha told Reuters, clutching her three children. 

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Two orphaned baby gorillas rescued in Congo were being cared for Tuesday by national park staff who fear their plight might signal a new escalation of wildlife smuggling by rebel groups fighting each other and Congo's army.

"In the areas where rebel activity has escalated, poaching has also escalated," LuAnne Cadd, a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park, told NBC News.

It's not just gorillas, either. "Elephant poaching has increased in Virunga's central sector," Cadd said.

The rescued infants — 4- and 9-month-old females — are Grauer's gorillas, a species also known as eastern lowland gorillas and closely related to the more famous mountain gorillas.

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"Baby gorilla trafficking is terribly damaging for endangered gorilla populations because many members of the gorilla's family will probably have been killed to obtain the infant," Emmanuel de Merode, director of Virunga National Park, said in a statement.

As for Virunga's mountain gorillas, Cadd said it is not known how they're faring. "We haven't been able to monitor this area yet," she said.

The new rescues raises to 10 the number of Grauer's gorilla orphans confiscated in Congo over the last four years, Virunga National Park said.

The 9-month-old was turned over to Virunga on Sept. 13 by a local conservation group, which said it got the infant from an armed group.

The 4-month-old was rescued on Sept. 20 during a sting operation that led to the arrest of two men, who said they acquired the gorilla in an area where armed groups are vying for control over mines. Those men face trial and, possibly, a life sentence if convicted. 

NBC News reported last year how baby gorillas can demand tens of thousands of dollars on the international black market,. 

The total population of Grauer's gorillas, which exist only in eastern Congo, is estimated at fewer than 4,000 — down from an estimated 17,000 in 1995.

Protecting Virunga's wildlife has been deadly: 11  rangers were killed last year in armed confrontations, while so far this year one has been killed and several wounded.

Related: Baby gorilla on black market for $40,000 is rescued

For now, the infants will remain at Virunga's orphan gorilla sanctuary during a three-month quarantine period.

"The two gorillas showed some interest in each other when they first met," Cadd wrote in a Virunga blogpost, "but for the older gorilla, it seems as if she considers the younger one a competition for food and milk, often trying to grab the milk bottle or banana from the younger gorilla, and even throwing a tantrum once when she didn’t get a bottle too.

"The most likely plan" will be to move them to a Congo sanctuary that already has 13 Grauer's gorillas, Cadd said.

"There has been talk about releasing those gorillas into the wild eventually," she said, but added that "it's a bit controversial" due to the uncertainty of their fate back in the wild.

Oil a blessing or curse?
The rescues come as Congo announced that the British firm SOCO has been authorized to explore for oil in Virunga National Park.

Declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 1970s, the park is the only place on Earth that boasts all three African great apes in addition to elephants, buffalo, hippos, antelopes, lions, leopards and smaller animals and birds.

The area includes Lake Edward, one of the Central African great lakes used by some 40,000 fishermen. 

Hydrocarbons Minister Crispin Atama Tabe told The Associated Press that oil exploitation could help bring security to volatile east Congo.

Mining of the region's massive mineral riches, however, has had the opposite effect with armed groups vying for control.

Moreover, Congo's environment ministry last year suspended oil exploration in an area of Virunga where more than 200 gorillas live. Environment Minister Bavo Nsamputu said he was unable to comment on Monday's news as he had been abroad.

Park officials say Congo's Nature Conservation law protects national parks from any kind of exploitation. That persuaded the French oil group Total to promise last year that it would not exploit the one-third of its concession that falls in Virunga.

SOCO, with 58 percent of its concession in Virunga, argues the law allows "geological research for scientific purposes" and cites 
exemptions for "research work, such as sampling materials, digging, excavations, surveying, and all other work that may change the look of the land or vegetation."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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