THE HAGUE, The Netherlands (AP) – The International Criminal Court on Thursday convicted a child soldier who turned into a brutal commander in the notorious Ugandan rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army of dozens of war crimes and crimes against humanity, ranging from May many crimes in forced marriages.
Dominic Ongwen, who was abducted by the shadow militia as a 9-year-old boy and turned into a child soldier and later promoted to a higher rank, faces a maximum life sentence after being convicted of 61 offenses.
The judgment, which can be challenged, highlighted the horrors of LRA attacks on displaced civilian camps in northern Uganda in the early 2000s and Ongwen’s abuse of women who were forced to be his “wives”. Activists welcomed his convictions for crimes against women, which included rape, forced pregnancy and sexual slavery.
Defense attorneys argued that Ongwen was “a victim and not a victim and a perpetrator at the same time.”
But Presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt rejected those arguments, saying, “This case concerns the crimes committed by Dominic Ongwen as a fully responsible adult, as an LRA commander in the mid to late 1920s.”
Schmitt described the reign of terror unleashed by the Lord’s resistance army, which was founded and led by one of the world’s most wanted war crimes suspects, Joseph Kony.
Civilian women captured by the group were turned into sex slaves and husbands for fighters. The LRA turned the children into soldiers. Men, women and children were killed in attacks on IDP camps.
“Civilians were shot, burned and beaten to death,” Schmitt said in detail of a May 2004 attack on a camp in the Ugandan village of Lukodi by Ongwen-led fighters.
Kony promoted Ongwen to colonel after the attack.
Dozens of Lukodi residents gathered around a portable radio to follow the Hague proceedings. Some burst into tears as they pleaded guilty, according to a local journalist on the spot.
Ongwen showed no emotion as the verdicts were read in court. Defendants are usually ordered to appear while the president reads the verdicts. In Ongwen’s case, there were so many that he was allowed to sit.
“The LRA has been terrorizing the people of northern Uganda and neighboring countries for more than two decades. An LRA leader has finally been held accountable to the ICC for the terrible abuses suffered by the victims, “said Elise Keppler, associate director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program.
Reacting to the convictions, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, said that her thoughts are with the victims of the LRA atrocities.
Bensouda acknowledged that Ongwen was once a victim of the LRA, but said he had become “one of the highest military leaders, fervently engaged in the infamous brutality of the LRA.” As an adult, he was personally responsible for encouraging and committing against others even the crimes he himself suffered as a child. As it turned out at trial, he was also a direct perpetrator of the terrible sexual violence, including against young girls, some of whom were “forcibly married” to him.
Delphine Carlens, deputy director of the International Federation for Human Rights, said Ongwen’s convictions for rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage and forced pregnancy were “a breakthrough in the international recognition of the seriousness of these crimes and an important result of the prosecutor’s policy on to sexual and gender-based crimes. ”
The Lord’s resistance army, which began in Uganda as an anti-government rebellion, is accused of atrocities, including mass murder, recruiting boys to fight and keeping girls as sex slaves. At the height of its power, the group was a notoriously brutal costume, whose members eluded Ugandan forces in the forest of northern Uganda for years.
When military pressure forced the LRA out of Uganda in 2005, the rebels spread to parts of central Africa. Reports over the years have claimed that Kony hid in the Darfur region of Sudan or in a remote corner of the Central African Republic, where LRA fighters continued to kill and abduct in occasional raids on villages and where Ongwen was arrested in 2015. .
Kony became internationally known in 2012, when the US advocacy group, Invisible Children, made a viral video highlighting LRA crimes. At that time, the group had already been weakened by malfunctions, as it was divided into smaller, very mobile groups. The Ugandan army estimated in 2013 that the group contained only a few hundred fighters.
“Today’s verdict reminds us that LRA chief leader Joseph Kony remains a fugitive who has avoided justice for more than 15 years,” Keppler said, urging nations to pledge again to bring him to justice at the ICC. ”
Invisible children said this week that 108 children abducted by the LRA remain missing.
Martin Ojara Mapenduzi, president of Gulu district in northern Uganda, told The Associated Press that there were “mixed reactions” among locals.
Some were saddened that Ongwen faces years in prison, despite being the victim of the insurgency, he said, while many others cried for children they do not expect to see again.
“There are so many children who remain deputies. When something like this happens, it brings back painful memories, ”Mapenduzi said, referring to Ongwen’s conviction.
Mapenduzi said he had a nephew kidnapped in 1996, and the boy’s mother “screamed” his name in a few days, looking for him.
“From 1996 until now, we do not know if he is dead or alive,” the official said.
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Associated Press writer Rodney Muhumuza of Kampala, Uganda, contributed to the report.