The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday, May 6, sentenced Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan child soldier who became a commander of the brutal rebellion of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), to 25 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Dominic Ongwen, 45, was convicted in February of 61 charges, including forced pregnancy, which had so far never been pronounced by The Hague-based ICC.
He was also notably found guilty of murder, rape, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers.
"In light of the gravity of the crimes you have committed, the chamber sentences you to a total period of imprisonment of 25 years," said Judge Bertram Schmitt, addressing Dominic Ongwen.
According to the court, Dominic Ongwen ordered attacks on refugee camps in the early 2000s, when he was one of the commanders of the LRA, an armed group led by fugitive Joseph Kony, which waged a war. brutal action in Uganda and three neighboring countries to establish a state based on the ten commandments of the Bible.
Dominic Ongwen was liable to life imprisonment.
But believing that his story - himself kidnapped by the rebel group when he was around nine years old - warranted a lower sentence, the prosecution requested 20 years in prison.
"This is a circumstance that sets this case apart from all others tried by this tribunal," prosecution Colin Black said at the April sentencing hearing before the ICC.
After pleading for acquittal during the trial, stressing that the accused had himself been the victim of the brutality of the rebel group, the defense asked, during this sentencing hearing, 10 years in prison for the former child soldier, nicknamed the "white ant".
The victims, they demanded life imprisonment.
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Victim and executioner
Dominic Ongwen has always denied "in the name of God" all the charges against him.
He told the ICC that the LRA forced him to eat beans soaked in the blood of the first people he was forced to kill as an initiation, after being kidnapped.
"I am before this international tribunal with so many accusations, and yet I am the first victim of child abduction," he said during his trial.
“What happened to me, I don't even believe it happened to Jesus Christ,” he added.
In finding him guilty, the ICC judges admitted that Dominic Ongwen himself had suffered greatly but considered that his crimes had been committed "as a responsible adult and commander of the Lord's Resistance Army".
According to the UN, the LRA massacred more than 100,000 people and abducted 60,000 children in violence that spread to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.
Dominic Ongwen, who surrendered in 2015, is the first LRA commander to be tried by the ICC.
The group's founder, Joseph Kony, is believed to be still at large and the subject of a court arrest warrant.
With AFP
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