Child soldier turned warlord ordered to pay record-breaking $56 million to victims

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) — A former commander of the Ugandan guerilla group the Lord’s Resistance Army, convicted of 61 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, was ordered by the International Criminal Court to pay $56 million in restitution on Wednesday. 

In 2021, the Hague-based court found Dominic Ongwen — himself a former child soldier — guilty of murder, rape and sexual enslavement as he rose through the ranks of the Christian extremist group. 

“The chamber concludes that the direct victims of the attacks, the direct victims of sexual and gender based crimes and the children born out of those crimes, as well as the former child soldiers, suffered serious and long-lasting physical, moral and material harm,” presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt said. 

Ongwen attended the hearing via a video link from Norway. He was transferred to a prison facility in the Scandinavian country late last year to serve his sentence. 

The judges included nearly 50,000 victims in the order. Each is entitled to a symbolic 750 euros ($812). The court allocated 15 million euros ($16 million) for rehabilitation programs and a further 100,000 euros ($108,000) for memorials and commemorations. 

The group terrorized northern Uganda and neighboring countries throughout the 1980s under the leadership of the self-declared prophet Joseph Kony.  

The victims will never receive any money directly from Ongwen. The court has found him to be indigent and judges urged countries and organizations to donate to a trust to provide compensation. 

Under the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court in 2002, victims may apply for reparations, either as individuals or collectively. The signatories to the agreement contribute to a trust fund for victims, which can provide compensation when the perpetrator lacks the resources to pay. 

The previous record for reparations was set in 2021 when Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda was ordered to pay $30 million. 

Over 4,000 victims have participated in the trial. Their lawyers pushed for the approximately 46-year-old — his age is disputed — to be given a life sentence, but judges took into account his own victimization when ordering Ongwen to serve 25 years. 

Ongwen was 9 years old, a child walking to school, when he was kidnapped by the guerilla group which he later helped lead. He made history by being the first defendant in the court’s 20-year history to admit participating in some of the crimes of which he was accused. 

“It is the first time the court is called upon to address the unique situation of victim-perpetrator,” presiding judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza said while reading out the decision in Ongwen’s final appeal in 2022. 

During four years of hearings, two psychiatrists testified that Ongwen suffered from both post-traumatic stress disorder and a dissociative identity disorder stemming from his own time as a child soldier.

“The fact that Mr. Ongwen was abducted at a young age does not absolve him for acts committed as an adult. Not all victims become perpetrators and criminals,” Paolina Massidda, a lawyer for the victims, told the court during closing arguments. 

The court's outreach service set up a video screening of the hearing in Gulu City, Northern Uganda. It also organized radio listening events in the 24 towns where Ongwen committed atrocities. 

It is the fifth case in the court’s history to reach the reparations stage. The first person arrested by the court, former Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, was ordered to pay $10 million in reparations to his hundreds of victims in 2017. 

Ongwen was the lowest-ranking of the Lord's Resistance Army commanders indicted by the court in 2005. Kony has also been charged, but his whereabouts are unknown; the three other people charged by the court have since died or are presumed to be dead. Ongwen turned himself in to U.S. Special Forces who were searching for Kony in the Central African Republic, after having fallen out of Kony’s good graces. 

Prosecutors at the court are currently pressing forward with the charges against Kony, despite not having him in custody. The court is not allowed to try defendants in absentia but it can move forward with the first step in the proceedings — confirming the charges against him — without his participation. 

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