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.
