A former Ugandan rebel who was kidnapped as a child by the Lord’s notorious Resistance Army and who later became a militia commander was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity on Thursday at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The defendant, Dominic Ongwen, was a 9-year-old boy on his way to his village school in the summer of 1988, when armed LRA fighters grabbed him and took him to the camp, where they whipped and threatened him and started training him to be a child soldier.
Now in his 40s, he faces life in prison on charges of rape, forced marriages, torture, slavery and multiple murders. His case sparked debate among lawyers and experts in international law because young Ongwen was the victim of some of the same crimes he would be accused of, including the recruitment of child soldiers under the age of 15.
But in their decision, the judges did not cite their childhood experiences as a mitigating factor.
This is the first trial of a commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group that waged a violent campaign in Uganda and several neighboring countries from the late 1980s until recently. The case brought to light details about how the fighters brutalized and mutilated their supposed enemies. More than 4,000 people were represented by lawyers as victims of Ongwen’s crimes in the case.
When the presiding judge, Bertram Schmitt, announced the verdict, he read a long list of cruelties that Ongwen ordered.
“He gave instructions to loot food, kidnap people, set fire to camp and barracks,” said Judge Schmitt. “An old woman who was unable to carry her burden was strangled and her throat was cut,” he added. “His men shot, beat and kidnapped civilians in the head and face to make sure they were dead.”
Some children were put in a bag and beaten to death, said the judge.
“A witness saw bodies carved in a barbaric way,” he added. He also said that the defendant was described by his subordinates as an extremely skilled commander that they loved to follow.
During the four-year trial, Mr. Ongwen’s lawyer argued that his client suffered from mental disorders and confusion about his identity. He said his client was so brutalized when militiamen turned him into “a fighting machine” that he never learned to distinguish right from wrong, and that made it more difficult for him to control his behavior.
The judge, however, said that Mr Ongwen “did not commit any crime under duress”.
Human Rights Watch estimates that the LRA has kidnapped at least 25,000 children in Uganda alone. Fighting between rebels and government troops displaced nearly two million people from their homes in the country from 1987 to 2006.
The rebels, expelled from Uganda in 2006, also terrorized residents, looting property and animals and burning houses in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic. A United Nations report estimated that 450,000 people have fled their homes in those countries.
The prosecution pointed out that Mr. Ongwen never tried to escape from his captors, unlike so many other boys and men. Instead, prosecutors said, he followed orders and appreciated his role, rising through the ranks to become one of the rebel’s top commanders. In addition, he refused to be examined by the prosecutor’s mental health experts.
He was found guilty of personally leading attacks in which his brigade looted property and animals, set fire to houses with people inside them, killed babies and abducted adults and children to be used as forced labor. The boys were trained as porters and fighters, and the girls were exploited as sex slaves and domestic workers.
The verdict ended a trial in which dozens of witnesses – including ex-child soldiers and their victims – gave their versions of Ongwen’s role in the rebel army’s campaigns against thousands of villagers that militiamen saw as government supporters and enemies.
“This trial is a milestone for the victims of so much brutality,” said Elise Keppler of Human Rights Watch, who has long studied the rebel group. “Justice is so difficult to achieve. This is the first opportunity for people to see these notorious crimes registered and tried in court. “
The bloody attacks of the LRA and its elusive leader, Joseph Kony, have become notorious. In the region, many admired and feared Mr. Kony, who claimed to have mystical powers.
Ongwen’s fighting career lasted more than 25 years, but his trial focused on attacks on refugee camps in northern Uganda from 2002 to 2005, because prosecutors had the strongest evidence of these events.
The trial did not cover the group’s many subsequent attacks or violence in four other Central and East African countries.
Thursday’s proceedings, transmitted from the court, were eagerly awaited at exhibition sites set up in northern Uganda, where many communities were affected by the conflicts. Some groups regularly followed the trial through special radio programs.
They heard prosecutors play recordings of radio interceptions and satellite calls by the rebels, and heard details of military logbooks and intelligence reports provided by the Ugandan government. Both the prosecution and the defense presented a large number of witnesses who spoke of their experiences as ex-fighters or as forced wives of rebels who had children against their will.
The presiding judge said Ongwen was guilty of forced pregnancy, adding that this was a war crime and a crime against humanity. He said it was the first time that this crime was considered in the international court.
The judge, reading the verdict, spoke at length about the many crimes committed by the rebel army against women and particularly committed by Mr. Ongwen, who personally distributed women to the fighters in his unit.
The judge said seven women testified about being assigned as wives to Ongwen. The women said they were threatened with death if they tried to escape and that they were beaten with sticks.
In the past, critics have accused the ICC of being biased in pursuing more cases in Africa than elsewhere. But the accusation of LRA commanders was explicitly requested by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, whose government the rebels tried to overthrow.
The court issued warrants to five LRA leaders, including Mr. Ongwen. Three have since died, leaving Mr. Kony as the only one still at large. The United States offered up to $ 5 million as a reward for information that led to Kony’s arrest.
Invisible Children, an activist group that tracks Kony’s activities, said he remains a threat to civilians in Central and East Africa, even though his power is waning and his group is fragmenting. He was last seen in 2020 in a remote region of South Sudan.
Mr. Ongwen’s arrival in 2015 was an unexpected fortune for the court. He was part of Mr. Kony’s inner circle, but he had apparently fallen out of favor.
Ongwen was being held captive by Kony in the Central African Republic when he escaped and surrendered to the American Special Forces operating with African Union troops in the area to track Kony and his men, according to Stephen J. Rapp, former ambassador of the USA for war crimes issues. These forces then handed Ongwen over to the Hague authorities.
“He wouldn’t be at the ICC without the help of the U.S. government,” said Rapp.