The first witness in war crimes trial of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga reversed his testimony hours after relaying accounts of his conscription as a child soldier.
The young man told the court rebels from Lubanga's Union of Congolese Patriots nabbed him and forced him into a military camp when he was in the fifth grade, a report said.
“They said the country was in trouble and that young people must mobilize to save the country,” he said. “I said that we were still very small.”
Asked later by deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda following a lunch break if the earlier accounts were accurate, the boy recanted.
“No,” he said. “That is not what I intended to say.”
The prosecution and the defense both said, however, that the transcript of the earlier testimony may be incorrect due to poor translations.
Bensouda said she wanted the court to review protective measures for witnesses in the case, but the reversal added to further questions regarding the fairness of the trial.
