The International Criminal Court (ICC) appeals judges on Thursday confirmed the conviction of Dominic Ongwen, a former commander of the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and upheld his 25-year sentence for murder, child abduction and rape, reported The Reuters.
Ongwen, who was taken into ICC custody in 2015, was convicted of 61 offenses last year that included murders, rapes, forced marriages and recruiting child soldiers. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
His lawyers challenged the court’s ruling and raised 90 grounds for an appeal, alleging legal, procedural and factual errors in his conviction and sentencing.
Ongwen’s lawyers said that he was abducted as a nine-year-old and forced into a life of violence after the group killed his parents. The defence had argued that his horrific experiences in the rebel group meant he could not be held responsible for his later actions. The ICC court, however, dismissed all the arguments saying that he had a key role in the LRA’s acts as an adult.
“The appeals chamber rejects all the defense’s grounds of appeal and confirms unanimously the conviction decision,” the ICC Presiding Judge Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza said during the first part of the hearing and upheld all of Ongwen’s convictions.
Prosecutors and lawyers of the victims portrayed Ongwen as the LRA leader who personally ordered the massacres of more than 130 civilians at the Lukodi, Pajule, Odek and Abok refugee camps between 2002 and 2005. The lawyers of the victims have asked judges to uphold the conviction and sentence.
During the mid-1980s, Joseph Kony, a fugitive from the ICC, former the LRA as an anti-government rebel force. The rebel group terrorised Ugandans for nearly 20 years as it fought President Yoweri Museveni’s government from bases in northern Uganda and neighbouring countries. The militia has now largely been wiped out.
