Tribunal to Debut With Congo Case

"This would be the first time we have a real attempt to stem the cycle of atrocities and impunity that has fueled the continuation of the conflict," said Prendergast, an Africa expert who served as senior director of African affairs at the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton.

Only three years ago, Lubanga, commander of an ethnic Hema rebel group in control of the eastern town of Bunia, gave an interview to The Washington Post as he lounged on an outdoor sofa at one of his three villas. Child recruits who doubled as bodyguards brought him trays of tea and trimmed the hedges framing his garden. He said that he had taken in the children because they had nowhere to go and promised to remove them from armed service. A year later, they were still there with him.

At the height of the fighting, Lubanga had 3,000 child soldiers ranging between the ages of 8 and 15, according to human rights organizations.

At the same time, according to the United Nations, there were nearly 300,000 child soldiers fighting in 30 countries, 75 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

Amnesty International has interviewed children who described being given drugs to prompt them to fight -- making it difficult for these young recruits to return home or survive otherwise.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. special representative on children and armed conflict, reported recently on African child soldiers she met who had turned into killers with the sustained use of drugs. Such children were recycled into conflicts across borders as mercenaries, she said.

Amnesty reported that recruitment of child soldiers in Congo has continued despite internationally funded programs to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate underage fighters into society. Bensouda, the deputy prosecutor, said about 30,000 children were attached to armed groups in Congo during the peak of the conflict there, making up 40 percent of forces carrying arms. Amnesty International cited comparable figures.

By June of this year, a government commission had demobilized 19,054 children, Amnesty said. At least 11,000 children are still with armed groups and unaccounted for, remaining a reservoir of firepower for armed forces primed to resume hostilities, Amnesty and Bensouda said.

"Regardless of the outcome of the proceedings" against Lubanga, "this case represents a huge step in the struggle against these serious crimes against children," chief prosecutor Luis-Moreno Ocampo declared in August.

"Since the Nuremberg trials, this grand experiment is the next evolution in international law. It is the first such stand against this torrent of history," Prendergast said of the Congo case. He cautioned that imperfections remain and that the court would have to find ways to go after "arms linkages and arms deliverers so culpable of intensifying the conflict," even though evidence will be hard to produce.