The Hague of the Netherlands
AP
–
International Criminal Court prosecutors began offering evidence on Tuesday in support of the charges against fugitive rebel leader Joseph Coney.
Connie faces 39 war crimes and crimes against humanity, as the fugitive leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or as the LRA who terrorized northern Uganda for decades.
“The social and cultural fabrics of northern Uganda are torn apart and struggle to reconstruct themselves,” Deputy Prosecutor Mandie Nian said in an opening statement.
The LRA launched an attack in Uganda in the 1980s. After being kicked out of Uganda, militias continued to attack villages in the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. He was well known for using child soldiers, mutilating civilians and enslaving women.
Nian said the victim was still “harmed by his own body and mind.”
As part of a presentation to a panel of three black robe judges, Nian showed multiple graphic videos of the destruction that the prosecution said was made by the LRA, including clips from Ugandan police videos depicting the bodies being removed from the tiled rub of the burnt-out building.
The so-called confirmation of the court’s charges hearing comes 20 years after Kony’s arrest warrant is issued.
Although the ICC hearing is not a trial, prosecutors can outline the case before the court. Connie will be represented by her defense attorney in his absence. After weighing the evidence, the judge can control whether to confirm the charges against Connie, but as long as he is under ICC’s control, he will not be brought to trial.
Kony’s court-appointed lawyers argued that the case violated the client’s fair jurisdiction and should not have been bound at all.
“The empty chairs affected the preparations for defense,” said attorney Peter Haynes, pointing to the courtroom seat where Connie was in attendance.
The hearing is seen as a court test case moving forward with other cases, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin, where suspects are deemed far from likely to detain suspects.
“Everything that happens at the ICC is a precedent for the next incident,” Michael Schaaf, a professor of international law at Case Western Reserve University, told The Associated Press.
Schaaf added that Netanyahu and Putin’s location are known, but Connie fled the US special forces and remains massive despite a $5 million reward. He also noted that while warrants for Netanyahu and Putin have been issued in recent years, Kony has been sought since 2005.
Kony entered the global spotlight in 2012 when a video about his crime came to word of mouth. Despite the attention and international efforts to capture him, he remains as a whole.
Many Ugandans follow the minutes of the ICC against Kony. There, even if the survivors regret not catching him, they welcome the accusation.
“He’s done a lot,” Odon Kajonba said.
Not everyone is satisfied with the progressive lawsuit.
“Why would you want to try a guy you can’t get? They should get him first,” said Odonga Otto, a former MP in northern Uganda. “That’s ock ha ha,” he said if he tried Connie while he was in custody, the court proceedings would be “more realistic” for the victims and survivors of his alleged crime.
Another LRA commander, Dominic Ongwen, was convicted in 2020 of 61 crimes recruiting murder, rape, forced marriage and child soldiers. Onswen was accused of the militia as a 9-year-old boy, transformed into a child soldier, and later became the brutal commander of a rebel group.
Ongwen is currently sentenced to 25 years in Norway.
