Joseph Kony case in The Hague begins with accounts of alleged atrocities | Joseph Kony

A world prison court docket listening to into prices of warfare crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity in opposition to the Ugandan fugitive insurgent chief Joseph Kony has begun with accounts of atrocities allegedly dedicated by his Lord’s Resistance Military.The ICC’s first in-absentia listening to will affirm prices however can’t progress to a trial in Kony’s absence. The warlord faces 39 counts, together with homicide, rape, sexual slavery, enslavement and torture, allegedly dedicated in northern Uganda between July 2002 and December 2005.From 1986, the LRA sought to overthrow Uganda’s authorities, saying it needed to ascertain a state based mostly on the Bible’s 10 commandments. By 2006, the UN estimated that 2 million individuals had been displaced. The LRA was then pushed into the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan and later the Central African Republic.US particular forces are amongst those that have tried and failed to seek out Kony. It’s not recognized if the warlord is even nonetheless alive.The victims “had no alternative once they had been compelled to observe killings. That they had no alternative once they had been made to kill. That they had no alternative when their our bodies had been became instruments of warfare”, Sarah Pellet, a lawyer representing victims of the LRA, instructed the court docket in The Hague.Joseph Kony (left) and his deputy, Vincent Otti, in a tent in what’s now South Sudan throughout a gathering with the UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland in November 2006. {Photograph}: Stuart Worth/AFP/Getty ImagesPellet cited a girl compelled to desert her youngster: “The rebels shot at me, forcing me to throw my child all the way down to run for my life. I nonetheless have no idea the place my youngster is.”An estimated 60,000 youngsters had been kidnapped by the LRA, many subjected to sexual violence. Greater than 100,000 individuals had been killed.Opening the prosecution case, the ICC deputy prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang mentioned: “The social and cultural cloth of Uganda has been torn aside and they’re struggling to get better.”The court-appointed counsel for Kony argued the proceedings violated their consumer’s honest trial rights and mustn’t have been held in any respect. “The empty chair impacted the preparation of the defence,” the lawyer Peter Haynes mentioned, pointing to the courtroom seat the place Kony would have been if he had been current.Everlyn Ayo, 39, instructed Agence France-Presse how the LRA attacked her college when she was 5 years outdated: “The rebels raided the college, killed and cooked our lecturers in huge drums and we had been compelled to eat their stays … For a few years now, I don’t see nicely. All I see is blood.”Richard Ochola, one in every of round 200 individuals who watched the listening to at Gulu secondary college in northern Uganda, criticised the method. “Watching the display with out seeing Kony’s face isn’t satisfying in any respect. Our dream is to have Kony face trial, denying or confirming he killed individuals,” the 34-year-old farmer mentioned.“What we’re watching in the meanwhile isn’t any totally different from watching a film produced in another country, as a result of contained in the courtroom there aren’t any individuals we all know or we are able to relate to our struggling.”Authorized consultants mentioned ICC prosecutors might use the case as a precedent for different high-profile suspects charged by the ICC and but to face trial, together with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.“[Prosecutors] have their eyes in the long term on the opportunity of utilizing this process in opposition to Putin or Netanyahu in the event that they proceed to elude justice 12 months after 12 months,” Michael Scharf, a world legislation professor at Case Western Reserve College, instructed Reuters.