The trial of a top lieutenant of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Dominic Ongwen will open on Tuesday at the International Criminal Court (ICC), with the former rebel commander accused of war crimes ranging from child kidnapping and forced marriage to rape and murder during the rebel group’s long rampage in northern Uganda.
The trial comes amid the ICC’s biggest crisis in its 15-year history, with several member states threatening to quit claiming Africans are targeted unfairly for prosecution.
Ongwen was himself a victim of the LRA’s child kidnapping campaign in 1988, pressed into service as a young teenager in Joseph Kony’s war against the government of President Yoweri Museveni, who had seized power two years before.
Ongwen faces 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for attacks on refugee camps in northern Uganda between 2002 and 2005, including committing or directing acts of rape, sexual enslavement and of conscripting child soldiers.
He will be asked to plead guilty or not guilty, after which prosecutors and lawyers representing the conflict’s victims will outline their case. On a later date his lawyers are expected to argue he is as much victim as perpetrator.
The ICC brought charges against Ongwen, Kony and four others who are believed dead, in 2005. Ongwen gave himself up to U.S. troops last January after a decade on the run, fearing for his life after falling out with Kony, who is still at large.
CCTV
