The International Criminal Court Monday confirmed the award of 52 million euros (about Ksh.7.4 billion) to victims of a Ugandan warlord who pressed a brutal reign of terror as part of the Lord’s Resistance Army commanded by fugitive Joseph Kony.
Dominic Ongwen, whose nom de guerre was “White Ant”, is currently serving a 25-year jail sentence for 61 charges, including murder, rape and sexual enslavement.
ICC judges had last year ordered 52 million euros ($57 million) in damages, including a “symbolic” payment of 750 euros for each of the near 50,000 victims identified in the case.
Ongwen had appealed the award but ICC appeals court judges unanimously rejected the challenge, according to presiding judge Solomy Balungi Bossa, who also comes from Uganda.
Ongwen himself followed proceedings by video link, dressed in a dark suit and red tie.
Forced to become a child soldier after being kidnapped on the way to school aged nine, Ongwen’s case cast light on the moral responsibility of those abducted as minors.
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, eventually spreading to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.
ICC judges ruled Ongwen personally ordered his soldiers to carry out massacres of more than 130 civilians at the Lukodi, Pajule, Odek and Abok refugee camps between 2002 and 2005.
While the court acknowledged he had been kidnapped as a “defenceless child”, judges said this did not mitigate his guilt.
The court’s Trust Fund for Victims will arrange for the reparations to be made as Ongwen — currently serving his sentence in a Norwegian prison — was unable to pay.
Ongwen surrendered to US special forces who were hunting Kony in the Central African Republic in early 2015 and he was transferred to the ICC to face trial.
The ICC is scheduled to hold a hearing to lay out charges against Kony in absentia on September 9.
