The International Criminal Court ohas today Thursday sentenced Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan child soldier who became a commander of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), to 25 years’ jail for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Dominic Ongwen, 45yrs was found guilty in February of 61 charges, including murders, rapes and sexual enslavement during a reign of terror in the early 2000s by the LRA, led by the fugitive Joseph Kony.
Prosecutors had asked for a 20-year prison term, saying Ongwen’s own history as a schoolboy abducted by the LRA justified a lower sentence than the maximum 30 years to life allowed by the ICC.
But on Thursday he was given a 25-year sentence by the Hague-based court.
The defence had sought a 10-year prison term for Ongwen for attacks by his soldiers on refugee camps in northern Uganda.
Victims of his crimes had asked the court to impose a full life sentence.
Ongwen told the court that the LRA forced him to eat beans soaked with the blood of the first people he was made to kill as part of a brutal initiation following his own abduction aged nine.
Judges said in their verdict in February that 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.
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.
