ICC to sentence former LRA Commander Dominic Ongwen

 

On Thursday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) will deliver its decision on the sentence in the case of ‘The Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen,’ a Ugandan child soldier-turned-Lord’s Resistance Army commander.

Ongwen could receive a life sentence for his crimes.  The court could levy fines and seize proceeds, property and assets derived directly or indirectly from the crime committed. The Court cannot impose a death sentence.”

A summary of the decision will be read out in public but due to COVID-19 restrictions, the decision will be delivered on a partially virtual basis.

The ICC convicted Ongwen in February of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The 45-year-old Ongwen faced 70 charges linked to a reign of terror in the early 2000s by the LRA, whose fugitive chief Joseph Kony waged a bloody campaign to set up a state based on the Bible’s Ten Commandments.

Ongwen’s case is the first at the ICC to involve an alleged perpetrator and victim of the same war crimes, with Ongwen himself having been abducted by the rebels as a child while on the way to school.