Ongwen set to face trial tuesday
Dominic Ongwen, the former child soldier who became a Lord’s Resistance Army warlord, will go before war crimes judges on Tuesday in a trial which presents the International Criminal Court with its “most difficult dilemma”.
What you need to know:
- Ongwen, now in his early 40s, is the first former child soldier to go on trial at the tribunal, and is due to plead Tuesday to 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity -- the largest number of charges ever brought at the Hague-based ICC against one defendant.
- But his own harrowing journey -- abducted at the age of 10 and brutalised as a child by the LRA led by Joseph Kony before rising through the militia’s ranks to become its deputy commander -- raises deep questions about how to prosecute such crimes. And the case is likely to set legal precedent.
The Hague. Dominic Ongwen, the former child soldier who became a Lord’s Resistance Army warlord, will go before war crimes judges on Tuesday in a trial which presents the International Criminal Court with its “most difficult dilemma”.
Ongwen, now in his early 40s, is the first former child soldier to go on trial at the tribunal, and is due to plead Tuesday to 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity -- the largest number of charges ever brought at the Hague-based ICC against one defendant.
But his own harrowing journey -- abducted at the age of 10 and brutalised as a child by the LRA led by Joseph Kony before rising through the militia’s ranks to become its deputy commander -- raises deep questions about how to prosecute such crimes. And the case is likely to set legal precedent.
Under the rule of Kony, a self-styled mystic and prophet who sought to impose his own version of the Ten Commandments, the LRA terrorised swathes of northern Uganda.
The UN says it slaughtered more than 100,000 people and abducted 60,000 children since it originated in 1987 and launched a bloody rebellion against Kampala.
Victims have recounted sadistic initiation rites for kidnapped youngsters forced to bite and batter friends and family to death. To drink their blood. Rituals Ongwen likely endured himself.
Despite his youth, this son of schoolteachers stood out for his loyalty and courage as well as his tactical mind.
According to ICC prosecutors, when Ongwen became an adult he turned abuser, helping orchestrate the abduction and enslavement “of children under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities.”(AFP)
