ICC hears a war crime case against the Ugandian rebel leader

The International Criminal Court (ICC) opened its military crime case against Ugandan rebel fugitive Joseph Connie in his first confirmation of hearing charges without the defendant present.

Production marks a historical moment for the court and can serve as a test case for future persecution of suspects in high -profile suspects who currently appear to be out of its scope.

Despite the arrest warrant issued 20 years ago, Connie, the founder and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), managed to avoid arrest.

He is facing 39 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, sexual slavery, abduction and forcing thousands of children to fight as soldiers in LRA.

Connie said he wanted to install a government based on the biblical 10 commandments and fights for the rights of Acholi people in the northern Uganda.

But his rebel group was known for hacked the limbs of the victims or parts of their faces.

Connie’s fame increased in 2012 because of a social media campaign to emphasize LRA’s alleged atrocities.

Despite these efforts and years of Manhunts, he remains a fugitive.

There was silence in the courtroom as the catalog of the allegations against him was read.

They also cover gender -based crimes related to the treatment of thousands of women and girls, including their enslavement, rape, forced marriage and pregnancy.

Atrocities are assumed to have been carried out in North Uganda between 2003 and 2004.

“Unfortunately, the tentacles of international justice, although they are prolonged, were not enough to guarantee the effective arrest of the fugitives,” said the Deputy Prosecutor of the ICC, Mama Mandia Niang, at the opening of the case.

“Many casualties who have had the strength to survive from the horrors of the Civil War have not survived from this prolonged waiting, others have lost patience, but there are some who have been waiting for that moment,” she added.

According to prosecutors, children were regularly abducted on the way to school, by the fields deprived of their fundamental rights and forced to kill for the Connie rebel group.

For the first time, the ICC exercised its power according to the Statute of Rome, its contract of foundation to continue forward without a suspect in custody.

The judges will hear the prosecution’s arguments, defense and casualties. Kony will be presented in absentia by a lawyer appointed by the court before the judges decide whether to confirm the charges.

However, the process itself cannot begin unless Connie is arrested and present in the Hague court.

Legal experts say the hearing can set a precedent on how ICC handles other fugitives who are unlikely to be detained.

For the survivors of the violence of LRA, the hearing is observed closely, albeit remotely, on the big screen created by ICC teams in North Uganda.

The rights defenders say that this confirms the suffering of thousands of people who withstood the reign of the rebels.

“This is a confession,” said one survivor. “Even if Connie is not in custody, the world hears what happened to our communities.”

In the case of the LRA, the Deputy Prosecutor pointed to the signs cut through communities in which the “victim became the perpetrator”, but Connie, he said, “remains the main perpetrator until the end.”

LRA was forced by Uganda by the army in 2005, and the rebels entered what was then Sudan (now South Sudan) and ultimately created a camp in the border area with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Later, they move to the Central African Republic, where it is understood that they were involved in poaching and illegal yield.

There were attempts by the Uganda government to make a peace deal with Connie, but the conversations fell apart in 2008 because the LRA leader wanted assurances that he and his allies would not be persecuted.

The ICC’s decision to press forward, without his present, emphasizes his determination to pursue accountability, even when arrests are difficult to achieve.

This move also emphasizes the fact that with a few other trials underway, this provides an opportunity to demonstrate that the built -in vessel is still able to function.

Currently, the best prosecutor at the ICC is on leave as a sexual offense is being investigated and a series of crippling sanctions from the United States in response to ICC arrest orders, which have issued arrest orders for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Minister of Defense.