Keen interest in ICC’s latest conviction
Publish date: 10 May 2021
Issue Number: 921
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: General
The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week sentenced former Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen (45) to 25 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Uganda. Legalbrief reports that the former child soldier was found guilty of 61 charges, including murder, rape and sexual enslavement during a reign of terror in the early 2000s by the LRA, led by the fugitive warlord Joseph Kony. Ironically, notes Legalbrief, Uganda in 2003 became the first country in the world to refer a case to the ICC after it was established the previous year. And in another significant development a former Sudanese official accused of carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur has requested to be tried at The Hague as opposed to his homeland.
ICC Presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt said the court had to weigh Ongwen’s brutality with his own tortured past as a schoolboy abducted by the LRA when deciding on a sentence. ‘The chamber is confronted in the present case with a unique situation. It is confronted with a perpetrator who wilfully brought tremendous suffering upon his victims,’ Schmitt said. ‘However, it is also confronted with a perpetrator who himself had previously endured extreme suffering at the hands of the group of which he later became a prominent member and leader.’ Al Jazeera reports that during his trial, Ongwen told the court that ‘what happened to me I do not even believe happened to Jesus Christ’.
Led by Kony, the LRA terrorised Ugandans for nearly 20 years as it battled the Government of President Yoweri Museveni from bases in northern Uganda and neighbouring countries. The Daily Maverick reports that it has now largely been wiped out. Ongwen was abducted by the group as a nine-year-old and forced into life of violence. At the same time, the judges found, he knowingly committed a vast range of heinous crimes as an adult, many of them against defenceless children and women who had been forced into slavery. Prosecutors had demanded he get at least 20 years in prison, while his defence argued he should get no more than a 10-year sentence because he was traumatised as a child soldier. The sentence can be appealed.
In an analysis in The Independent, Ronald Musoke notes that the sentencing was significant because it marked the conclusion of the first case, technically called a situation, to be brought before the ICC. ‘Even before his trial started, it was noted that it would mark the first time that a court trying crimes against humanity would confront the difficult question of how to hold accountable a high-ranking member of the perpetrator army who was also a victim, having been abducted as a child and groomed into the perfect killing machine. Ongwen’s case also offered the ICC an opportunity to implement its policy of focusing on cases of sexual and gender based violence when charging alleged perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity. How would the court treat evidence of forced marriages of unwilling, sometimes under-age abducted women to top commanders of the LRA such as Ongwen? What about the cases of forced pregnancy of the same women by the rebel army commanders? The Rome Statute criminalises forced pregnancy as a war crime and crime against humanity and Ongwen became the first person to be tried under international criminal law for forced pregnancy.’
Leading former Sudanese official Ahmed Haroun, who is accused of carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, has requested to be tried at the ICC as opposed to his homeland. BBC News reports that Haroun was a key ally of former President Omar al-Bashir who is now in custody. Haroun, who was detained in Sudan after al-Bashir was toppled, has told a court he is being held in ‘bad faith’ and ‘in violation of the law’. ‘An authority with this miserable legal performance will not be able or willing to ensure justice,’ he added. The ICC in 2007 issued a warrant for his arrest, listing 42 crimes including murder and the forcible transfer of civilians.
