By Journalists For Justice
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda has called on Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army commander Joseph Kony to surrender.
In a short video addressed to Kony and other LRA soldiers, Bensouda sought to put to rest rumours that ICC would arrest defectors and torture them. The Prosecutor urged LRA soldiers to defect without fear. She censured Kony for causing panic among defectors after ICC confirmed 70 charges facing Dominic Ongwen, who was Commander in the Sinia Brigade of LRA. Mr Ongwen was surrendered to the ICC on January, 16, 2015 and was transferred to the ICC custody on January, 21, 2015. The confirmation of charges hearing in this case was held from January 21 to 27 2016. Kony and the LRA are infamous for their perpetration of brutal crimes throughout many parts of central Africa, including mass killings, abductions, sexual violence, and natural resource pillage.
The LRA started in northern Uganda in the 1980s as a cult and militia with Kony as its self-proclaimed messiah. While initially purporting to fight against government suppression, brought terror on the region through the mass abduction of children, the use of sex slaves and child soldiers, and its brutal violence, including cutting off the limbs of its victims.
The United Nations says the group has kidnapped between 60,000 and 100,000 children, and killed around 100,000 people. Kony and several senior LRA commanders are wanted by ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity since 2005.
The group has come under increasing pressure of late. It was pushed out of Uganda in a military crackdown in 2006, and sought refuge in a remote and largely-ungoverned stretch of Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uganda formed a regional task force to hunt down the group in 2012, and the US offered support
