The International Criminal Court sitting in The Hague has found guilty and convicted former Lord’s Resistance Army –LRA commander Dominic Ongwen on 61 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was formally charged with 70 counts.
The crimes include attacks on the civilian population, murder, torture, persecution, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, sexual slavery, enslavement, rape, pillage, and destruction of property, attacks on the civilian population, and recruitment and use of children under the age of 15 to participate in the hostilities. The judges did not find evidence of duress or mental illness or defect that could negate his culpability for the crimes.
He committed the offense between October 2003 in Padura IDP camp in Pader district and April l 2004 in Lukodi IDP camp in Northern Uganda.
Some of the charges he has been convicted on include False marriage and forced pregnancy under the crimes against humanity.
The trial chamber IX, led by judges Bertram Schmitt, Peter Kovacs and Judge Raul Cano Pangalangan, have ruled that prosecution proved the charge based on witnesses including the seven women who were abducted and taken by Dominic Ongwen as his wives and servants.
Evidence further showed that Ongwen forced these women to have sex with him whenever he wanted and fathered children with them.
The judges have ruled that false marriage is a crime against humanity since no woman consented to the said marriage or pregnancy but were all forced into it.
The judges further stated that Marriage is an institution that should be respected without anyone being forced to enter into it and that forced marriages removes the dignity of a woman and creates both mental and physical trauma when the victims feel bonded to the person who is not of their choice and denied the women their fundamental right to free will.
The judges have explained that this is the first time that forced marriage is being considered.
He has also been convicted on gender based violence for abducting, beating, killing and giving away women as slaves to LRA senior soldiers.
The Hague based court dismissed claims by Ongwen that he committed the said offence under duress due to lack of evidence, and that he failed to prove that he had mental disease or defect.
The court further ruled that Ongwen was mentally stable at the time he committed the said offences and that he rose through different ranks and commanded the senior brigade, and was viewed strongly and repeatedly applauded by his other commanders including their leader Joseph Kony.
The court further ruled that Ongwen was not under any imminent threat of death in his life since he was not in a state of complete subordination but acted independently unlike other junior officers.
The court has however faulted the government of Uganda of failing to protect its citizens during the 20 year war insurgency.
Ongwen has 30 days to appeal the judgement.
Plaudits by International Rights body
International body Human Rights watch welcomed the covinction Dominic Ongwen on saying it is a major step for justice for widespread atrocities committed by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda.
According to a statement issued Thursday , the guilty verdict at the International Criminal Court) shows that rights abusers can find themselves held to account even if years have passed since their crimes.
Ongwen is the first LRA leader to be tried before the ICC, and the first to be convicted for LRA crimes anywhere in the world
The LRA terrorized the people of northern Uganda and its neighboring countries for more than two decades,” said Elise Keppler, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch.
“One LRA leader has at last been held to account at the ICC for the terrible abuses victims suffered. Would-be rights violators should take note that the law can catch up with them, even years later”she averred.
For more than two decades the rebel group LRA that was formed by Joseph Kony back in 1987 abducted and killed thousands of Civilians , mutilated and maimed the people of northern Uganda seriously decimating the population of communities in the Acholi region. They would cut off their lips, ears, noses, hands and feet.
The LRA abducted over 30,000 boys and girls and forced them to become soldiers, laborers, and sex slaves. They were forced to beat or trample to death other children who attempted to escape and were repeatedly told they would be killed if they tried to run away.