Dominic Ongwen convicted of war crimes for Uganda’s LRA rebels

Author: BBC | Published: Thursday, February 4, 2021

Dominic Ongwen says he was abducted by the LRA and became a child soldier/AFP

Ex-Ugandan rebel commander Dominic Ongwen has been convicted of war crimes at the International Criminal Court.

Thursday’s historic ruling also saw him convicted of forced pregnancy – a legal first in an international court.

Ongwen, a feared commander of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is the first member of the LRA to appear before the court.

He was convicted on 61 of the 70 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes he faced.

The charges relate to attacks on four camps for internally displaced people in Uganda in 2004. More than 4,000 victims provided testimony in the ICC case.

Ongwen’s sentence is to be handed down at a later date. He could face life imprisonment.

This case presented a dilemma to the court as Ongwen appeared to be both the victim and the alleged perpetrator.

He said he was abducted by the LRA and forced to be a child soldier, before going on to rise up the ranks to become the deputy to LRA commander Joseph Kony.

“Straight away we can say without mincing words that we are definitely going to appeal. On all the charges,” Ongwen’s lawyer Krispus Ayena Odongo told the BBC. He said the verdict “landed like a bombshell”.

But it was welcomed by Elise Keppler, associate director of the International Justice Program at campaign group Human Rights Watch.

“This case is a milestone as the first and only LRA case to reach a verdict anywhere in the world,” she told the AFP news agency.

Who is Dominic Ongwen?

Abducted by the LRA on his way to school
Rose to become a top commander
Accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including enslavement
ICC issued arrest warrant in 2005
US offered $5m (£3.3m) reward for information leading to his arrest in 2013
Transferred to the ICC in 2015 after his surrender. Found guilty of war crimes in 2021.

What was he convicted of?

Ongwen was convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder, rape torture, sexual enslavement and pillaging, among others.

The ICC issued a warrant for his arrest in 2005 and US and African forces had been searching for him since 2011.

In 2015 he gave himself up in the Central African Republic (CAR) and his three-and-a-half-year trial in the Hague ended in March.

At the start of the trial, according to AFP news agency, prosecutors showed gruesome footage of the scene after an LRA attack on Lukodi refugee camp in northern Uganda, where children were disemboweled and the charred bodies of babies left in shallow graves.

Presiding Judge Schmitt read out the names of civilians who were murdered on the orders of Ongwen at that same refugee camp and three others in the areas of Pajule, Odek, and Abok.

“Civilians were shot, burned and beaten to death. Children were thrown into burning houses, some were put in a polythene bag and beaten to death,” the judge is quoted as saying.

In a legal first for an international criminal court, Ongwen was convicted of the crime of forced pregnancy committed against seven women.

What did the judge say?

Reading out his verdict at the end of Ongwen’s trial, presiding judge Bertram Schmitt said “the chamber is aware that he suffered much.

“However this case is about crimes committed by Dominic Ongwen as a responsible adult and a commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Judge Schmitt added: “His guilt has been established beyond any reasonable doubt.

He said there was no evidence to support the defence argument that Dominic Ongwen “suffered from any mental disease or disorder during the period relevant to the charges, or that he committed these crimes under duress”.

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