THE HAGUE: The International Criminal Court will from Tuesday hear war crimes charges against fugitive Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, who stands accused of leading a brutal reign of terror that killed tens of thousands.
Judges will consider 39 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Kony, including murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery and pillaging during the ICC’s first-ever in absentia hearing.
A former Catholic altar boy and self-styled prophet, Kony founded and led Uganda’s most vicious rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, during the 1980s.
The LRA rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni resulted in at least 100,000 deaths according to United Nations estimates, along with 60,000 child abductions across several neighbouring countries.
Kony’s stated objective involved establishing a nation based on the Bible’s Ten Commandments, though escapees recounted horrific tales of the group’s extreme brutality.
Children were forced to murder family members or bite other children to death while abducted girls became sex slaves, including for Kony personally.
Former detainees also described gruesome rituals involving drinking victims’ blood and conducting punitive amputations.
The group rampaged through refugee camps decapitating civilians and burning people alive in their homes while kidnapping children to serve as soldiers or slaves.
Prosecutors detailed one allegation where LRA fighters snatched a baby girl from an abductee, threw the infant into a river, then attacked the kidnapped woman with a machete.
Believed to be hiding in dense Central African jungle, Kony has not appeared publicly for nearly two decades despite extensive capture efforts.
He gained global attention in 2012 when a justice campaign published a viral YouTube video that surpassed 100 million views within days.
Then US president Barack Obama deployed approximately 100 special forces to collaborate with regional armies hunting Kony, though the mission concluded in 2017 without locating him.
The LRA’s threat level has since dramatically decreased from several thousand fighters to just a handful dispersed across Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.
Judges will determine after three days of hearings whether the accusations contain sufficient credibility to proceed toward trial.
ICC rules prohibit any trial in absentia, meaning the case cannot advance to trial unless authorities capture and bring Kony to The Hague.
Defence counsel for Kony has requested cancellation of the hearing, describing it as an enormous expense of time, money and effort for no benefit whatsoever.
Prosecutors counter that holding this confirmation of charges hearing would expedite any potential trial following Kony’s arrest.
They further argue that presenting the accusations against Kony in the global court will deliver some sense of justice for the victims.
Kony, born in September 1961 according to court records, rarely met outsiders but told a western journalist in 2006 that he was not a terrorist.
He dismissed reports of LRA atrocities as untrue propaganda while denying his group abducted children.
The arrest warrant against Kony issued in 2005 represented the first ever issued by the ICC, established to prosecute the world’s worst crimes.
The court confirmed in April the award of 52 million euros to victims of Dominic Ongwen, a top LRA commander currently serving a 25-year prison sentence. – AFP
