{"id":43592,"date":"2019-10-23T16:08:21","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T13:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kfm.co.ug\/?p=43592"},"modified":"2019-10-23T16:12:36","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T13:12:36","slug":"ongwen-trial-dont-lose-hope-icc-tells-lra-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/ongwen-trial-dont-lose-hope-icc-tells-lra-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"Ongwen trial: Don\u2019t lose hope, ICC tells LRA victims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>By Bill Oketch<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The International Criminal Court (ICC) has asked the people of northern Uganda not to lose hope in the ongoing trial of Dominic Ongwen saying they have \u201ccredible evidence\u201d to pin the suspect.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0ICC team was in Lira town for a stakeholder informative session, mainly to provide update on the trial.<\/p>\n<p>The victims in Lango, once a war-ravaged area, have often expressed disappointment with how the ICC is handling the trial.<\/p>\n<p>However, Beti Hohler, an associate trial lawyer says they have been able to present credible evidence before the judges about what happened.<\/p>\n<p>Ongwen, a former child soldier turned rebel commander of the Lord\u2019s Resistance Army Senior Brigade, is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in northern Uganda.<\/p>\n<p>His trial commenced on December 6, 2016, and is on-going at the seat of the court in The Hague, Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">Mr Anthony Otim of Uganda Human Rights Commission said the trial is taking longer than many people had hoped. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">\u201cYou can imagine since 2016 when Ongwen was arrested, this is 2019 we still do not know where it (the case) is going,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">Mr Otim also told the International Cooperation Adviser in the Office of the Prosecutor, Mr Dahirou Sant-Anna, to advise the ICC to set a timeframe within which cases are handled. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">The LC1 chairman of Jinja camp Village in Lira Municipality, Mr Leone Obira, said Ongwen is already guilty as charged, and therefore he should be jailed. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">Mr Charles Edok Ongom of Lango Cultural Foundation said the defence is trying to pervert justice by bringing Kony\u2019s spiritual attributes in the trial.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">\u201cWe are not expecting any justice now because you cannot prove that Ongwen was possessed by the spirits. A moment you start talking about that, it means there is now going to be no justice,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">The traditional leader added: \u201cThere is nothing we should expect from ICC. Now that we are not expecting any justice, let ICC do something else for the people who have been subjected to this mental and physical torture.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';\">Abducted at 9, Ongwen now stands trial for 70 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 11.0pt; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"gmail-msonospacing\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Bill Oketch The International Criminal Court (ICC) has asked the people of northern Uganda not to lose hope in the ongoing trial of Dominic Ongwen saying they have \u201ccredible evidence\u201d to pin the suspect. The\u00a0ICC team was in Lira town for a stakeholder informative session, mainly to provide update on the trial. The victims in Lango, once a war-ravaged area, have often expressed disappointment with how the ICC is handling the trial. However, Beti Hohler, an associate trial lawyer says they have been able to present credible evidence before the judges about what happened. Ongwen, a former child soldier turned rebel commander of the Lord\u2019s Resistance Army Senior Brigade, is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":43593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43592"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}