The International Criminal Court on Thursday threw out an appeal by Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan child soldier-turned-commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army, against his conviction and 25-year sentence for war crimes.
Dominic Ongwen, who was himself abducted aged nine by the rebel group led by the fugitive Joseph Kony, was found guilty last year of murder, rape and sexual enslavement in northern Uganda during the early 2000s.
“The appeals chamber unanimously rejects all the grounds of appeal” against his conviction, said Judge Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza. One ground of appeal against his sentence was rejected by majority and the rest unanimously.
Dressed in a dark suit and tie, Ongwen briefly waved to the public gallery but otherwise remained impassive as he listened through headphones to the judgment.
Appeals judges said that although Ongwen had been kidnapped as a “defenceless child” it did not mitigate his guilt. They also rejected his arguments about mental illness, and said he had a key role in LRA atrocities as an adult.
The LRA was founded three decades ago by former Catholic altar boy and self-styled prophet Joseph Kony, who launched a bloody rebellion in northern Uganda against President Yoweri Museveni.
Defence lawyers argued earlier this year that Ongwen, who is believed to be in his mid-40s but whose birth date remains unclear, had been scarred by his own experience as a youth in the LRA.
“Dominic Ongwen was, and still is, a child,” Ongwen’s defence lawyer Krispus Ayena Odongo told the court in February, adding that Ongwen still believed he was “possessed” by the spirit of Kony.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said last month said he would ask judges to confirm charges against Kony despite his absence, as the rebel leader is still at large.
– ‘Scapegoat’ –
Ongwen surrendered to US special forces who were hunting Kony in the Central African Republic in early 2015 and he was transferred to the ICC to face trial.
The LRA’s bid to set up a state based on the Bible’s Ten Commandments killed more than 100,000 people and saw 60,000 children abducted, spreading to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.
Ongwen, whose nom de guerre was “White Ant”, was found guilty on 61 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which also included charges of himself turning young abductees into child soldiers.
Prosecutors portrayed Ongwen as leading a reign of terror by the LRA, personally ordering the massacres of more than 130 civilians at the Lukodi, Pajule, Odek and Abok refugee camps between 2002 and 2005.
Judges ruled that Ongwen had not suffered from mental illness despite his own history of being abducted on his way to school by the LRA, described by experts as one of Africa’s “most brutal militia forces”.
Ongwen’s lawyers had appealed the conviction on 90 different grounds and the sentence on 11, saying there were errors in “law, fact and procedure”.
“The trial was a proxy prosecution, a prosecution of the LRA using (Ongwen), a child soldier, as a scapegoat,” Krispus Ayena Odongo said in court papers.
Kony should be in the dock instead of Ongwen, since it was he who had decided on the distribution of women and children as sex slaves, he added.
“Kony remains unapprehended; he has escaped the tentacles of various states,” Odongo added.
