Dominic Ongwen
| Dominic Ongwen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1975 (age 41–42) Coorom, Kilak County, Amuru district, Northern Uganda |
| Nationality | Ugandan |
| Other names | White Ant |
| Education | primary school |
| Known for | Ex-commander in the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) |
| Home town | Coorom, Kilak County, Amuru District, Northern Uganda |
Dominic Ongwen was born in 1975 in the village of Coorom, Kilak County, Amuru district, Northern Uganda. He is the ex-commander of the Sinia Brigade of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla group that formerly operated in northern Uganda. As the head of one of the four LRA brigades, Ongwen was a member of the "Control Altar" of the LRA that directs military strategy. He is currently detained by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and has been awaiting trial. Proceedings commenced 6 December 2016.
Dominic Ongwen is almost certainly not his birth name. Like most other children of his age in Acoliland at the time, his parents would have trained him to give a false name if ever he was abducted, to protect the rest of the family.
Ongwen was abducted by the LRA at the age of fourteen as he walked to Koro Abili Primary School. According to his own testimony this happened in 1988 when he was fourteen. However, it has often been reported that he was nine or ten, and also that he was carried by other captives all the way up to the LRA’s main military bases because he was ‘too little to walk’.
Once abducted, he was tortured and forced to watch violent rituals of people being killed and subsequently indoctrinated, while still a child, as an LRA fighter. He then rose within the ranks and eventually became head of one of the four LRA brigades.
Ongwen was the lowest ranking of the five LRA leaders for whom the ICC issued their first ever warrants in June 2005. He is the only one who the court succeeded in detaining, and, with the exception of the leader, Joseph Kony, is the only one now left alive. He was initially charged with four counts of war crimes (murder, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population and pillaging) and three counts of crimes against humanity (murder, enslavement, and inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering). The crimes were allegedly committed on or about 20 May 2004 at the Lukodi IDP Camp in the Gulu District, Uganda. The charges all relate to an attack on a camp for internally displaced people in Uganda in 2004.
On 21 December 2015, the ICC charged Dominic Ongwen with crimes in addition to those set out in the warrant of arrest: a total of seventy counts. The additional charges related to attacks on the Pajule IDP camp, the Odek IDP camp and the Abok IDP camp. The counts brought against the suspect in the context of these attacks include attacks against the civilian population, murder, attempted murder, torture, cruel treatment, other inhumane acts, enslavement, outrages upon personal dignity, pillaging, destruction of property, and persecution. The expanded charges against Dominic Ongwen also include sexual and gender-based crimes committed from 2002 to 2005 in Sinia Brigade – forced marriage, rape, torture, sexual slavery, and enslavement – and the conscription and use of children under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities from 2002 to 2005, in Sinia Brigade.
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