Judges at the
International Criminal Court... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
"confirmed 70 charges brought by the prosecutor against Dominic Ongwen," the Hague-based court said, paving the way to a trial on the alleged crimes.
Known as the "White Ant" in his native Acholi language, Ongwen is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role from 2002 to 2005 in the rebel group's reign of terror in northern Uganda, led by its runaway chief 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 Godand 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...
Ongwen will be the first LRA member to face trial at the ICC, set up in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes.
A former child-soldier-turned-warlord, Ongwen was Kony's one-time deputy and one of the most senior commanders of the LRA, which is accused of slaughtering more than 100,000 people and abducting 60,000 children in a bloody rebellion against Kampala that began in 1986.
Prosecutors in January told the ICC's judges that Ongwen was the "tip of the spear" of the group that has sown terror in several countries across central and eastern Africa.
Ongwen, who is about 40 years old, allegedly ordered the killings of civilians as well as the abduction and enslavement of children to be rebel soldiers as the LRA attacked helpless villages across the Ugandan countryside, prosecutors said.
Witnesses to the carnage said Ongwen ordered his hostages, at least on one occasion, to "kill, cook and eat civilians," prosecutors said.
The LRA first emerged in northern Uganda in 1986, where it claimed to fight in the name of the Acholi ethnic group against the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
But over the years it has moved freely across porous regional borders, shifting from Uganda to sow terror in southern Sudan before heading into northeastern 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 finally crossing into southeastern Central African Republic in March 2008.