Court pursues fugitive Uganda rebel leaders

KAMPALA, Uganda

The top commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army roam the jungles and brush of southern Sudan, northern Uganda and eastern Congo, likely aware that they are four of the world’s most-wanted men.

The International Criminal Court unsealed arrest warrants Oct. 14 for Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo and Raska Lukwiya, charging them with crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Kony is the LRA’s self-appointed messianic leader, Otti is his deputy, and Odhiambo and Lukwiya are top aides responsible for regional military operations. “They are the main glue that keeps the others together,” said Ugandan army spokesman Lt. Col. Shaban Bantariza. If the four were captured or killed, he said, the remaining rebel forces would fall apart faster.

A fifth top military figure, Dominic Ongwen, is thought to be dead. Authorities in Kampala say he was killed in late September while carrying out raids in northeast Uganda.

The indictments of the four LRA leaders are the first in the ICC’s three-year history. They accuse the LRA command of organizing atrocities against civilians, including killings, enslavement, sexual enslavement, rapes, forced conscription of children and pillaging.

Kony faces 33 counts; Otti, 32; Odhiambo, 10, and Lukwiya, four.

The LRA, in a 19-year campaign, has reportedly abducted children and teenagers and forced them to become fighters, sex slaves or baggage handlers. The United Nations estimates that more than 20,000 children in northern Uganda have been forcibly recruited by the LRA.

About 1.6 million people live in wretched refugee camps in northern Uganda, trapped between the LRA and the Kampala government, which sends the army to hunt the LRA. The latter is labeled a terrorist group by Uganda and the United States. The group claims to be fighting to establish a society ruled by the Ten Commandments.

Ugandans oppose ICC role

But the Acholi tribe, Kony’s ethnic kin and the most frequent target of his attacks, rejects ICC intervention.

“The framework by which Kony conducts his war is totally out of the orbit of the ICC and the international community’s rationale of things,” said Morris Ogenga-Latigo, an opposition lawmaker from Acholiland. “He doesn’t have the capacity to respond rationally to that indictment. He will just continue to pursue his war.”

Such an assessment led tribal and religious leaders, as well as ordinary Ugandans, to campaign in March against the ICC’s decision to pursue an investigation. They failed to persuade chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to drop the case, but their concern has not subsided.

“The arrest warrants, we are not against them, but will the warrants help us?” said Sheik Al Haji Musa Khalil, a member of the Gulu-based Acholi Religious Peace Leaders Association. “Will it bring peace?”

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