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Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) has announced all SIM cards still unregistered by July 31 will be switched off and no extension will be offered.

Regis Gatarayiha, director general of RURA, said the country had already missed the deadline, despite the fact more than 5.4 million mobile phone subscribers had enough time from February this year when the exercise kicked off.

Only two million of the 5.4 million subscribers have since complied.

Rwanda has an efficient registration system which is linked to the national identification database.

This ensures that once the national Identification details of the subscriber are captured electronically, the registration is completed instantly.

“Now that we have a system that is very efficient and we have tried to explain the rationale, it shouldn’t be a problem any further,� said Gatarayiha

It is believed that with the increasing number of crimes perpetrated via mobile phones, especially related to mobile money transactions, the registration will help in curbing the crime.

“We have seen some crimes committed using mobile phones and it was important to come up with the policy due to the adoption of many applications that use a mobile phone,” Gatarayiha added.

Rwanda mobile phone operators also intend to use the registration to be able to identify customer�s physical addresses, something that will assist them in solving problems arising from particular areas.

�Accordingly, SIM Card registration was one of the targets of the East African Communication Organization (EACO) where member states were supposed to have registered SIM cards by the end of 2012,�Gatarayiha said.

If all goes as planned, Rwanda will be joining other East African countries such as Kenya who have already switched off non-registered SIM cards.

KIGALI, Mar 19 � Rwanda said on Tuesday it would not get involved in any potential transfer of DR Congo rebel Bosco Ntaganda to the International Criminal Court (ICC) after he surrendered to the US embassy.

Ntaganda � who is wanted by the ICC for a string of alleged atrocities including rape and sexual slavery � gave himself up to the US embassy in Kigali on Monday after escaping to Rwanda from neighbouring DR Congo.

�Rwanda has no decision to take in this matter,� Foreign Minister Louis Mushikiwabo told AFP Tuesday.

�It is a matter for the United States who are holding the suspect, the DR Congo � the country whose nationality the suspect holds � and the ICC, by whom the suspect is wanted.�

Ntaganda is sought on seven counts of war crimes and three counts of crimes against humanity for his alleged abuses in two regions of DR Congo � Ituri and North Kivu. Charges against him include using child soldiers, murder, rape and sexual slavery.

The ICC on Tuesday welcomed Ntaganda�s surrender and said they wanted him transferred to The Hague as soon as possible.

The Prosecutor�s Office at the war crimes court alleges Ntaganda � nicknamed �The Terminator� � headed the military wing of the Union of Congolese Patriots, an armed group in Ituri.

He then became military chief of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) in North Kivu, another rebel group.

He was subsequently incorporated into the regular DR Congo army and given the rank of general as part of a peace deal, before defecting again in 2012 and becoming involved in the M23 rebel mutiny against Kinshasa.

His exact role within M23 has never been clear but simmering tensions between him and another top commander boiled over into outright fighting at the end of February.

DR Congo officials said Sunday he had fled to neighbouring Rwanda, which has been accused by Kinshasa and the United Nations of masterminding, arming and even commanding M23 rebels in the resource-rich east of the country.

Source: AFP.

NAIROBI, Kenya � Bosco Ntaganda, a Congolese rebel general accused of massacring civilians and building an army of child soldiers � considered one of Africa�s most wanted men � surprisingly turned himself in to the American Embassy in�Rwanda�on Monday, saying he wanted to be sent to the�International Criminal Court.

Mr. Ntaganda, a boyish-looking rebel commander who was nicknamed the Terminator, has been wanted by the International Criminal Court�on war crimes charges�for more than six years, sometimes hiding out in the thickly forested hills of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo�or�other times appearing in public, as when he would cavalierly play tennis at a fancy hotel in one of Congo�s bigger towns.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said Mr. Ntaganda walked into the embassy in Kigali, Rwanda�s capital, on Monday morning and �specifically asked to be transferred to the I.C.C.�

Ms. Nuland said she could not answer why, after years of being on the run, he chose to turn himself in to American diplomats but said �we are working to facilitate his request.�

In the past few weeks, Mr. Ntaganda has been attacked by fighters in his own rebel group, the so-called M23, which is widely believed to be covertly supported by Rwanda. The M23 recently split, partly over the issue of whether or not to turn in Mr. Ntaganda, and scores of M23 fighters fled to Rwanda, where they were immediately disarmed.

But for Mr. Ntaganda, the options were dwindling.

�The Rwandans would have killed him,� said Barnab� Kikaya bin Karubi, Congo�s ambassador to Britain. �He knew too much.�

He added, �His only chance to stay alive was to turn himself in to the Americans or whomever.�

Some analysts have posed another theory � that Rwanda secretly arranged for Mr. Ntaganda to surrender. Otherwise, they said, it would have been very difficult for someone as notorious as him to travel undetected through Rwanda, a small, tightly run country full of police checkpoints. Adding to these suspicions is the fact that the person to break the news that Mr.Ntaganda had suddenly surfaced at the American Embassy was Rwanda�s foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo ��in a Twitter message.

Rwanda has strenuously denied the growing body of evidence that higher-ups in the Rwandan military were working closely with Mr. Ntaganda or other rebels to dominate the lucrative mineral trade in eastern Congo. But several Western nations, including the United States, believed the links and recently cut aid to Rwanda, putting officials there under unprecedented pressure to distance themselves from Congolese rebel groups.

Eastern Congo has been a toxic hodgepodge of rebel groups for years, with several of them linked back to Rwanda. Millions of people have died from malnutrition and disease connected to the relentless conflict, and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped. Congo plunged into chaos in 1996 when Rwanda covertly backed an insurrection; today, large slices remain no-go zones where marauding men pillage, rape and kill with total impunity.

According to prosecutors at the I.C.C., Mr. Ntaganda was one of the worst of Congo�s brutal rebel leaders. In the first set of charges against him, filed in 2006, prosecutors said he extensively used �children under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities� while he was a rebel commander in 2002 and 2003. Though the United States is not a member of the court, the Obama administration has indicated support for it.

Last year, prosecutors expanded the allegations, accusing Mr. Ntaganda of spearheading civilian massacres and using rape and murder as a way to ethnically cleanse certain areas of Congo. Mr. Ntaganda has hopscotched from rebel army to rebel army, and�in 2008, human rights groups�said he oversaw the slaughter of scores of civilians in the eastern Congo town of Kiwanja, where residents were pulled out of their homes and shot in the head in front of their families.

�Bosco Ntaganda is not called the Terminator for nothing,� said Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst for the Enough Project, an American anti-genocide organization. �The U.S. should immediately hand him over to the International Criminal Court for trial. This would send serious signals to current and future warlords.�

Background information on Mr. Ntaganda is thin, but reports from human rights groups indicate he was born in Rwanda around 1973 and grew up partly in Congo. An ethnic Tutsi, he served in the Tutsi-led Rwandan Army, became a rebel commander in Congo and then joined the Congolese government army in 2009 as part of a deal to pacify eastern Congo. He was often seen hanging around Goma, one of Congo�s biggest cities, playing tennis at the Ihusi Hotel or swigging drinks at various nightclubs.

Last spring, Mr. Ntaganda and other Tutsi soldiers mutinied, calling themselves the M23 and claiming the Congolese government had marginalized them. In November, the M23 captured Goma, sending spikes of alarm across this part of Africa and even into Western capitals. Congo, it seemed, was getting very shaky again.

Mr. Karubi said that it is �good news Bosco is no longer out there killing people� but that �the most important thing for Congo right now is the intervention brigade.�

He was referring to a recent plan by neighboring countries to send in heavily armed peacekeepers to fight rebel groups.

�We need to secure our borders,� he said, �but Rwanda has no interest in that.�

Source: nytimes.com – JEFFREY GETTLEMAN.

- Born in 1973, grew up in Rwanda
- Fled to DR Congo as a teenager after attacks on fellow ethnic Tutsis
- At 17, he begins his fighting days – alternating between being a rebel and a soldier, in both Rwanda and DR Congo
- Keen tennis player
- In 2006, indicted by the ICC for allegedly recruiting child soldiers
- He is in charge of troops that carry out the 2008 Kiwanji massacre
- In 2009, he is integrated into the Congolese national army and made a general
- In 2012, he defects from the army, sparking a new rebellion which forces 800,000 from their homes

By Penny Dale – BBC Africa

Bosco Ntaganda has a beautiful smile, according to those who have met him – but beneath the smile lies a ruthless operator who well deserves his nicknames “Terminator Tango” or “The Terminator”.

Gen Ntaganda was first indicted in 2006 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for allegedly recruiting child soldiers during the Democratic Republic of Congo’s bloody five-year war.

Additional charges of rape, murder, persecution based on ethnic grounds and the deliberate targeting of civilians were added in May 2012 as a result of evidence given during the trial of his co-accused and former boss, warlord Thomas Lubanga – the first person to be found guilty by the court two months earlier.

A witness testified that as a child he fought alongside “The Terminator” – saying he was a man who “kills people easily”.

He denies the charges.

Impunity and luxury

Gen Ntaganda is “just as dangerous as Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony“, says Fatou Bensouda who becomes the ICC chief prosecutor in June.

“Not arresting Bosco, allowing him to walk freely, like he’s not committed any crimes, is unacceptable,” Ms Bensouda says.

But that is exactly what has happened, with President Joseph Kabila refusing to arrest him – for the sake of Congo’s peace, he has said.

The local population has not been so lucky.

They blame Mr Ntaganda and his soldiers for a series of rapes, looting and murders – in North and South Kivu provinces, and in the Ituri district of north-eastern DR Congo.

Bosco Ntaganda was born in 1973 in Kiningi, a small town on the foothills of Rwanda’s Virunga mountain range, famous for its gorillas.

As a teenager, Mr Ntaganda fled to Ngungu, in eastern DR Congo, following attacks on fellow ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda.

He attended secondary school there – but did not graduate.

In 1990, at the age of 17, he joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels in southern Uganda.

He fought, under the command of RPF leader – now Rwandan President – Paul Kagame, to end the genocide.

After Rwandan unrest spilled over into DR Congo, he started to flip between fighting rebellions and serving in national armies – both Rwandan and Congolese.

Mr Ntaganda then joined yet another rebel group – the CNDP – under the leadership of Laurent Nkunda, a key power-broker in the east of the country who, like Gen Ntaganda, had started his military career in the Rwandan rebel force that ended the genocide.

With the backing of Rwanda, he went on to overthrew Gen Nkunda and take over the leadership of the CNDP militia.

Despite being wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes, by 2009 Mr Ntaganda was soldiering on the side of President Kabila – and was promoted to general.

He was based in Goma, where he was in charge of up to 50,000 soldiers, many of them former rebels who remained personally loyal to him.

According to a UN investigation, Mr Ntaganda has built a lucrative business empire for himself in North and South Kivu – reportedly collecting taxes from mines controlled by the soldiers under his command, charcoal markets and illegal checkpoints.

Ruthless

He also is thought to own a flour factory, a hotel, a bar and a cattle ranch outside Goma.

Human Rights Watch researcher Anneke van Woudenberg has met “The Terminator” several times.

He is not an articulate or persuasive speaker, Ms van Woudenberg says.

But, standing at just over 6ft (1.8m) tall, he has a certain presence and charisma – and likes to wear leather cowboy-style hats.

But it is his ruthlessness that really stood out for her: “He is someone who will never face up to his crimes. He always denies and comes up with excuse after excuse to justify what he has done.”

The list of his alleged crimes is huge – and Congolese people say “The Terminator” is regarded as a man who leads from the front and personally takes part in military operations.

In November 2008 international journalists filmed him commanding and ordering his troops in the village of Kiwanja, 90km (55 miles) north of Goma, where 150 people were massacred in a single day.

He also commanded troops accused of having killed, because of their ethnicity, at least 800 civilians in the town of Mongbwalu, in Ituri district in 2002, after his troops took control of the rich gold mines in the area.

In early April 2012, he appears to have defected from the Congolese army – reportedly leaving Goma, taking with him up to 600 heavily armed soldiers.

On 11 April, Mr Kabila finally called for his arrest – but he said he would not be handing Gen Ntaganda to the ICC.

Later that year, Gen Ntaganda’s M23 rebel group seized Goma before agreeing to withdraw.

Months of fighting have forced some 800,000 people to flee their homes.

Source: BBC.