Ugandan Child Soldier Found Guilty

 

THE NETHERLANDS

Shades of Gray

The International Criminal Court (ICC) found a Ugandan former child soldier-turned-rebel commander guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a case that was described as “morally the most complicated” the Netherlands-based court had ever handled, reported Al Jazeera.

The court found former Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen guilty of 61 charges, including murder, the abduction of children as well as forced pregnancy – the latter a legal first for the court.

Ongwen faces life imprisonment.

Ongwen, 45, was abducted by the LRA when he was a child and the charges are related to crimes committed in the early 2000s.

His lawyers said that he suffered psychological damage as a result of being abducted as a child and was a “victim and not a victim and perpetrator at the same time.”

Judges, however, said the defendant was responsible for his own actions.

Analyst Kristof Titeca noted that the case involved a “huge gray area which is difficult to determine in international law, which thinks in terms of victims and perpetrators.”

Under the leadership of Joseph Kony, the LRA terrorized Uganda for nearly two decades, killing more than 100,000 people and abducting 60,000 children.

In 2005, the Ugandan military was able to expel the group from the country but Kony’s whereabouts remain unknown.