A once notorious Congolese militia leader who will soon walk free after a long prison term handed down by the International Criminal Court war crimes tribunal, plans to return home, the court said Monday.
Germain Katanga, 37, was sentenced to 12 years in prison last year over a massacre in a village in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, but The Hague-based court last week reduced the term, saying he would be freed in January after voicing regret.
Katanga "has expressed the wish to return to DRC and notably to Aru in (northeastern) Ituri to become a farmer and live near his family," the ICC's outreach coordinator Margot Tedesco told a press conference in Kinshasa.
Katanga, once dubbed "Simba" the lion because of his ferocity, was accused of supplying weapons in the 2003 ethnic attack in which some 200 people were killed, some hacked to death with machetes.
Arrested in the Congo in 2005 and then transferred to The Hague in 2007, Katanga was only the second person to be sentenced by the tribunal since it began work in 2003 to try the worst war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Government spokesman Lambert Mende told AFP that once freed after serving time "he is Congolese, he has the right to return to his country and live where he wants."
The Ituri region where the Bogoro massacre occurred has been riven by violence since 1999, when clashes broke out that killed at least 60,000 people, according to rights groups.
"The ICC should explain this decision to affected communities and pave the way for Katanga's return to the Congo," said Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, international justice advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.
A former member of the armed fighters of the Patriotic Resistance Forces in Ituri (FRPI), Katanga has said he now wants to live with his six children and be a farmer.
He added he was also prepared to work with the UN special mission in the country and help the government to rein in "residual groups of militias".
The ICC judges said they had considered that Katanga's release would "give rise to some social instability in the DRC, but found no evidence to suggest that it would be of a significant level."
However, HRW called on the court to monitor the security situation and ensure the safety of witnesses who had testified against him.