This archive report was first published on 28 October 2019.
On October 28, 2019, DR Congo military prosecutors requested life imprisonment for a warlord accused of leading the mass rape of hundreds of people, including children, in the central African country's volatile east.
Frederic Masudi Alimasi, known as Kokodikoko, and two other men committed crimes against humanity, including rape, torture, murder, imprisonment, and sexual slavery, said military prosecutor Major Apollinaire Yoma Mukoko.
The Raia Mutomboki militia, led by Kokodikoko, is accused of raiding the village of Kabikokole on February 8, 2018, and taking more than 100 women hostage to rape them one after another, according to the Panzi Foundation's surgeon Denis Mukwege, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for helping women recover from rape.
Similar crimes were committed in six other villages during April 2018, the prosecution said. South Kivu has been wracked by sexual violence during decades of conflict between armed groups.
