THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) — Lawyers for a former child soldier convicted of keeping sex slaves and forcing them to bear his children are asking the International Criminal Court to overturn his conviction.
A week of hearings in an appeal by former Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen opened before The Hague-based court on Monday, with defense counsel accusing the court of violating his due process rights and prosecutors defending the Ugandan’s 25-year sentence.
Lawyers for the 47-year-old claim the trial chamber at the ICC made “legal, factual and procedural errors,” citing 90 grounds of appeal against his conviction and a further 11 against his jail sentence. The appeal is the “largest ever considered by the chamber, raising complex and novel issues,” the court said in a statement.
Almost exactly one year ago, Ongwen was convicted of 61 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for torturing and killing civilians during attacks on displaced persons camps in northern Uganda between 2002 and 2005. During that time, he held a senior role in the brutal quasi-Christian militia headed by Joseph Kony.
Ongwen pleaded not guilty to all charges in 2016 and argued for leniency because he had been forced to serve as a child soldier. During a rambling two-hour presentation in his own defense last April, Ongwen detailed his kidnapping by the LRA at age 9, claiming he was forced to disembowel civilians, wear their intestines around his neck and eat beans soaked in their blood.
Krispus Ayena Odongo, one of Onwgen’s attorneys, accused the ICC of “cherry-picking” evidence from the trial to ensure a conviction.
“The court came with a predetermined mind to convict Dominic Ongwen,” he said.
Defense filings focused on Article 31 of the Rome Statute, the section of the treaty, which created the court in 2002, that describes how a defendant could be excluded from responsibility for crimes, including mental health disorders. Ongwen was the first defendant before the court to admit to participating in some of the crimes with which he was charged.
Monday's hearing was held in a hybrid fashion, with some participants present in the courtroom and others appearing virtually. Ongoing internet issues, however, delayed the proceedings by hours. Ongwen was present, wearing a grey suit and a blue face mask only covering his mouth.
Prosecutor Helen Brady argued the defense team was merely repeating arguments made during Ongwen's three-year trial.
“He fails to show that the trial chamber erred in law,” she told the three-judge appeals panel.
Lawyers for the 4,065 official victims in the case had asked for a life sentence. The prosecution had requested 30 years, but the court settled for 25, citing Ongwen’s history as a child soldier and his mistreatment at the hands of the LRA as mitigating factors.
Victims’ lawyers asked the court to uphold the sentence, arguing that Ongwen made no attempt to leave the organization or otherwise resist.
“Yes he was abducted, but it seems he loved his job so much,” said Francisco Cox, one of the lawyers for the victims.
Eighteen other organizations have also filed amicus briefs in the case, falling on both sides of the appeal. In the coming days, the ICC will hear from Public International Law & Policy Group, a global pro bono law, about the burden of proof for Ongwen's insanity defense, as well as the International Center for Transitional Justice, a nonprofit organization focusing on transitional justice, about how potential reparations should be allocated, among others. Ongwen is unlikely to pay any compensation himself but the court does have a trust fund for victims.
Kony and the LRA came into the global spotlight when a short documentary about the leader’s atrocities, “Kony 2012,” went viral that year. More than 100 million people have viewed the 28-minute film since it was published and it brought immense attention to the plight of child soldiers in Uganda. The landlocked central African country has been mired in conflict since its colonial independence in the 1960s.
The LRA has been operating since 1987 but lacks a clear political agenda, instead functioning as a personality cult focused on Kony, a self-declared prophet. It has displaced some 2.5 million people across Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A United Nations estimate found that the LRA was responsible for killing 100,000 people and forcibly conscripting between 60,000 and 100,000 children into its fighting force.
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