Dominic Ongwen, a former commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has pleaded not guilty to war crimes and crimes against humanity as his trial opened Tuesday before the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
Ongwen said he was himself a victim of the LRA atrocities while denying personal responsibility. He said the LRA should be blamed instead.
“I am one of the people against whom the LRA committed atrocities in northern Uganda,” he said, “It is not me who is the LRA.”
Ongwen told the court that being put on trial was like taking him to the bush for a second time.
He faces 70 counts related to atrocities committed by the LRA in a brutal 20-year war in northern and parts of eastern Uganda.
The charges include; murder, enslavement, inhuman acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, rape, pillaging, torture and sexual slavery, among others.
Abducted as a child himself, Mr Ongwen was indicted alongside four other top commanders of the LRA in 2005 but he, so far, remains the only one to go to trial after he was captured by the Seleka rebel group that operated in rural eastern Central African Republic at the end of 2014.
Defence lawyers will argue that much of the evidence against Ongwen is unreliable and say their client was brutalised and traumatised after being abducted.
“He was tortured … forced to watch people being killed, used for fighting as a child soldier. Even the prosecution have said that what he went through is a serious mitigating factor,” said Thomas Obhof, a US lawyer based in Uganda and part of the defence team.
Thousands back here in Uganda are watching the Ongwen trial in The Hague on screens set up by the ICC at viewing sites in the four locations where the most significant alleged crimes were committed. The trial has been hailed by human rights campaigners.
