|
2021-02-04 International-UN-NGOs
|
|
ICC to hand down judgment against former Lord's Resistance Army commander
|
[AlAhram] The ruling at the International Criminal Court will be the first dealing with crimes by the LRA, New York-based Human Rights Watch said
War crimes judges on Thursday deliver their verdict in the case of Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan child soldier turned top commander in the Lord’s Resistance® Army, a rebel group known for extreme violence and forcing women into sexual slavery.
Ongwen, 45, faces 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity and could be imprisoned for life if convicted. Judges will not address sentencing on Thursday.
Continued from Page 3
It highlights the difficulty of trying somebody who, as a conscripted child soldier, is both an alleged perpetrator and a victim. His lawyers have asked for acquittal.
Led by runaway warlord Joseph Kony
 ... The Lords Resistance Army is a religious and military group formed in 1987. It is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium, and who is periodically possessed by demons, Beelzebub and Legion prominent among them. Kony advises his soldiers to draw crosses on their chests as a protection against bullets. This does't work, but nobody outside the LRA minds. The group is based on a hodge podge of apocalyptic Christianity, mysticism, and traditional Acholi religion, and claims to be establishing a theocratic state based on an odd interpretation of the Ten Commandments. The LRA is famous for systematic criminal conduct, including murder, abduction, mutilation, sexual enslavement of women and children, forcing children to participate in hostilities, and occasional cannibalism. The LRA operates mainly in northern Uganda and also in parts of Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo...
, the LRA terrorized Ugandans for nearly two decades as it battled the government of President Yoweri Museveni
... President-for-Life of Uganda. He assumed office in 1985. His primary virtue is being prefereable to both his predecessors, Idi Amin and Milton Obote...
from bases in the north of the country and in what is now South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo
 ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo , which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material...
and the Central African Republic.
The case at the ICC focused on 2002-2005, when prosecutors said members of the LRA carried out crimes including murder, rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage, torture, pillaging and the conscription of children under the age of 15 for fighting.
After being kidnapped by the LRA as a boy, Ongwen worked his way up to a commander, overseeing the Sinia Brigade, one of the group’s four main operational units with up to 800 fighters.
Detained in 2015, he remains in the court’s custody. His 3.5-year-trial ended in March 2020.
Ongwen’s lawyer says the brutal life in the LRA affected his mental health and his capacity to make independent decisions.
"When Ongwen was kidnapped he had no option, he was made a slave. That slavery continued until he left the bush," lawyer Krispus Odongo told judges in closing arguments.
But prosecutors countered that Ongwen was an adult at the time of the alleged offences and cannot be excused of responsibility.
Ongwen’s case is extremely complex because under the law "you have either a victim or a perpetrator and anything in between is very difficult to squeeze in," said Barbora Hola, senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement.
In 2004, the Ugandan government referred the conflict with the LRA to the ICC, the world’s first permanent tribunal for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. 
|
Posted by trailing wife 2021-02-04 00:14||
||
Front Page|| [17 views ]
Top
|
|
03:59 Grom the Reflective
03:54 Grom the Reflective
03:29 Frank G
02:59 Besoeker
02:50 Frank G
02:28 Besoeker
01:39 Grom the Reflective
01:35 Grom the Reflective
01:34 Raj
01:33 Grom the Reflective
01:31 Grom the Reflective
00:59 Grom the Reflective
00:58 Grom the Reflective
00:22 DooDahMan
00:19 badanov
00:17 DooDahMan
|
