International Criminal Court appeals judges have rejected the enchantment through a former commander within the Ugandan riot Lord’s Resistance Army of his conviction on dozens of fees of battle crimes and crimes towards humanity.
In a landmark judgment just about two years in the past, Dominic Ongwen used to be convicted of 61 offenses that incorporated murders, rapes, pressured marriages and recruiting kid squaddies from 2002 to 2005.
He used to be sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment.
His attorneys raised 90 grounds for the enchantment, alleging prison, procedural and factual mistakes in his conviction and sentence.
In the primary a part of a listening to on Thursday, the appeals judges upheld all of Ongwen’s convictions.
Ongwen sat in court docket paying attention to the ruling via a headset.
The #ICC Appeals Chamber confirms, unanimously, the conviction of Dominic #Ongwen for crimes towards humanity and battle crimes dedicated in Northern #Uganda between 1 July 2002 and 31 December 2005. pic.twitter.com/wqmdCufiJj— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) December 15, 2022
Child soldier with LRA
Ongwen used to be himself kidnapped through the Lord’s Resistance Army as a 9-year-old boy and used to be remodeled through the defense force right into a ruthless kid soldier.
At trial, defence attorneys mentioned his abduction and indoctrination into the LRA made Ongwen a “victim and not a victim and perpetrator at the same time.”
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The appeals chamber rejected arguments that he used to be mentally undeserving to be convicted and that he used to be beneath duress on the time of his offenses.
The Lord’s Resistance Army used to be shaped through its chief, Joseph Kony, as an anti-government riot power in Uganda.
It has been accused of standard atrocities, together with mass killings, mutilations, recruiting and using child soldiers, and retaining women as intercourse slaves.
LRA dispersed throughout central Africa
An army marketing campaign pressured the LRA out of Uganda in 2005, scattering its contributors throughout central Africa.
Over the years, reviews have claimed that Kony used to be hiding in Sudan’s Darfur area or in a far off nook of Central African Republic, the place LRA fighters continued to kill and abduct folks all through occasional village raids, and the place Ongwen used to be arrested in 2015.
Kony, who’s a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, changed into across the world infamous in 2012 when the US-based advocacy team Invisible Children made a viral video highlighting the LRA’s crimes.
Author: RFI
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