ICC orders Uganda commander to pay $56 million in reparations to war crime victims

The International Criminal Court (ICC) ordered Dominic Ongwen, a former commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), to pay $56 million in reparations Wednesday to several thousand victims of crimes against humanity. Ongwen was charged with committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Northern Uganda between July 2002 and December 2005 as a commander for the LRA. The LRA is a Ugandan militant group established in the 1980s by Joseph Kony. The US government in the past considered the LRA a terrorist organisation. Ongwen was abducted by the LRA when he was nine and eventually became a military commander for the group. The LRA has diminished in size in recent years and now operates in the border region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. The ICC held Ongwen responsible for LRA attacks against the Ugandan civilian population, murder, attempted murder, torture, enslavement, pillaging, outrages upon personal dignity, destruction of property, persecution, forced marriage, rape, sexual slavery, enslavement, forced pregnancy, conscripting children under the age of 15 into an armed group, and using them to participate actively in hostilities. Thousands have been killed by the LRA and tens of of thousands of...