Former child soldier turned rebel leader given 25 years for war crimes
The International Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced a former child soldier who became a notorious rebel leader to 25 years in jail for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Dominic Ongwen, 45, whose nom de guerre was White Ant, was found guilty in February on 61 charges.
These included murder, rape and sexual enslavement, carried out in northern Uganda during a reign of terror in the early 2000s by the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by the fugitive Joseph Kony.
“In light of the gravity of the crimes that you committed … the Chamber sentences you to a total period of imprisonment of 25 years,” Judge Bertram Schmitt said.
Prosecutors had asked for a 20-year prison term, saying Ongwen’s own history as a schoolboy abducted by the LRA justified a lower sentence than the maximum 30 years to life allowed by the ICC.
The defence sought a 10-year prison term for Ongwen for attacks by his soldiers on refugee camps.
Victims of his crimes asked the court to impose the full life sentence.
Judge Schmitt said the court was faced with a “unique situation” with the case, saying Ongwen was both a criminal and a victim.
The LRA was founded three decades ago by former Catholic altar boy and self-styled prophet Kony, who launched a bloody rebellion in northern Uganda against President Yoweri Museveni.
Its brutal campaign to set up a state based on the Bible’s Ten Commandments left more than 100,000 people dead and 60,000 children abducted. The insurgency eventually spread to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
During his trial, Ongwen told the court that the LRA forced him to eat beans soaked with the blood of the first people he was made to kill as part of a brutal initiation following his own abduction aged 9.
Judges said in February that Ongwen personally ordered his soldiers to carry out massacres of more than 130 civilians between 2002 and 2005.