Daily Times

The International Criminal Court will decide Thursday on an appeal by a Ugandan child soldier-turned-commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army against his conviction and 25-year sentence for war crimes.

Dominic Ongwen, who was abducted aged nine by the rebel group led by the fugitive Joseph Kony, was found guilty last year of murder, rape and sexual enslavement in northern Uganda during the early 2000s.

The LRA was founded three decades ago by former Catholic altar boy and self-styled prophet Joseph Kony, who launched a bloody rebellion in northern Uganda against President Yoweri Museveni. Judges will read the verdict from 1030 GMT at the ICC’s high-security headquarters in The Hague, where Ongwen’s trial had started six years ago, in what is expected to be a lengthy session.

Defence lawyers argued earlier this year that Ongwen’s conviction and sentence should be overturned as he had been scarred by his own experience as a child soldier. “Dominic Ongwen was, and still is, a child,” Ongwen’s defence lawyer Krispus Ayena Odongo told the court in February, adding that Ongwen still believed he was “possessed” by the spirit of Kony.