ICC starts hearing on charges against Uganda's fugitive warlord Joseph Kony

Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday opened hearings to confirm charges against fugitive Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony.

Legal analysts suggest the proceedings could serve as a model for other prominent ICC suspects who remain at large, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“(Prosecutors) are clearly looking long-term at the possibility of applying this procedure to Putin or Netanyahu if they continue to evade justice year after year,” said Michael Scharf, professor of international law at Case Western Reserve University, speaking to Reuters.

The ICC has faced criticism from powerful non-member states such as the United States, as well as from some of its own members, after it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. Israel has denied the allegations and rejects the court’s jurisdiction.

The ICC issued a warrant for Vladimir Putin in March 2023, accusing him of unlawfully deporting hundreds of Ukrainian children. The Kremlin has consistently dismissed the charges.

Kony, leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is the ICC’s longest-standing fugitive, with a warrant first issued against him in 2005.

Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang told the court that prosecutors are seeking to indict him on 39 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, conscription of child soldiers, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy between 2002 and 2005.

“All of these crimes were committed by the LRA under Joseph Kony’s command,” Niang said, noting that children in northern Uganda lived in constant terror of abduction and violence during the LRA’s campaign of “systematic brutality.”

In 2022, ICC prosecutors moved to revive the case by requesting confirmation of charges hearings in Kony’s absence. After further attempts to locate him failed, judges agreed to proceed in absentia.

A three-judge panel will now decide whether to confirm the charges, with Kony’s interests represented by court-appointed lawyers.

Formed in the late 1980s with the goal of toppling the government, the LRA waged a campaign of terror across northern Uganda for nearly two decades under Kony’s leadership.

Victims of his forces welcomed progress at the ICC but voiced frustration at the absence of reparations.

“All this money being spent on a symbolic trial of a man who isn’t even here, whose whereabouts remain unknown, would be far better used to compensate us,” said Louis Lakor, a former LRA child soldier from northern Uganda, speaking to Reuters.

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