ICC sentences Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army leader to 25 years

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By LE Desk

May 6: The international criminal court has sentenced a former militia leader and child soldier from Uganda to 25 years in prison after he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a landmark judgment.

The presiding judge, Bertram Schmitt, said the panel of judges had considered sentencing Dominic Ongwen to life imprisonment, the court’s harshest punishment, but had sided against it due to the defendant’s own personal suffering, the Guardian reported.

Ongwen was convicted in February on charges of murder, rape, sexual slavery, abduction and torture committed as a commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a violent cult which waged a bloody campaign in Uganda and neighbouring countries from the mid-1980s until only a few years ago.

The court rejected defence arguments that because Ongwen was abducted by the LRA at the age of 10 he had committed any crimes under duress.

The 41-year-old was “a perpetrator who wilfully brought tremendous suffering upon his victims, however, also a perpetrator who himself has previously endured extreme suffering at the hands of the group of which he later became a prominent member and leader”, Schmitt said on Thursday as he announced the sentence.

The case is one of the most momentous in the ICC’s 18-year history, but has raised difficult questions of responsibility and blame, the Guardian said. The tribunal’s decision will have a significant impact on future prosecutions for crimes against humanity, experts say.

Lawyers for Ongwen, the first former child soldier to be in the dock in The Hague, argued that he should get no more than a 10-year sentence because he was traumatised when the LRA abducted him at the age of 10.

In his first appearance in December 2016, Ongwen said he would plead not guilty, telling the court he was “one of the people against whom the LRA committed atrocities” and should not be on trial.

However, judges described Ongwen as an extremely capable fighter and commander who planned attacks carefully, assessed risks, and was repeatedly praised by other commanders. They said he did not face the threat of death or serious harm if he disobeyed orders, and did not take many opportunities to leave the LRA but rather rose in rank and position.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/may/06/icc-sentences-ugandan-lords-resistance-army-leader-dominic-ongwen-to-25-years

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