Will Joseph Kony ever face justice? His victims are doubtful

On September 9, in a dusty school hall in a remote corner of northern Uganda, rows of men and women sat stiff-backed on wooden chairs watching a flickering TV set. The air was taut with anticipation.

Three thousand miles away, at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, charges were being read out against Joseph Kony, the warlord who gained global notoriety for terrorising this region as leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Only one figure was missing: Kony himself.

Kony is still believed to be hiding somewhere in central Africa. However, in an unprecedented step, the ICC is pressing ahead without him, confirming charges in absentia in the hope that, if he is captured, a full trial can quickly begin.

Legal experts say the proceedings could act as a blueprint for other high-profile ICC indictees at large, including Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister.

The move has stirred a tangle of emotions in Uganda. Some struggle to see how justice can be done without the man in the dock. Others would rather not hear his name at all.

It is now two decades since the court first unsealed its warrant for Kony’s arrest. Today, northern Uganda is peaceful but poor, and it is still haunted by the ghosts of the war Kony waged there in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Between 1987 and  2004, some 25,000 children were forced to become soldiers, and some two million people were displaced internally by his religious army. Atrocities included razing  villages, summary executions and abducting young girls for use as sex slaves.

In the school hall, silence fell as the prosecution opened its case in the Hague, listing the 39 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity against him.

Evelyn Amony was abducted from her family home in 1994, aged 12. At first, she served as babysitter for Kony’s children. Once she turned 14, however, Kony decided to make her his wife.

“They give you to anyone, whether you want to or not,” she told The Telegraph. “If you refuse, they kill you.”

She had three children with Kony, who was more than twice her age. “I wanted to be a doctor, but my future got lost,” she said.

Her fellow captive, Franka Akello, served as a babysitter for her children. Ms Amony tried to care for the younger girl. “She told me not to worry so much about home, because there will come a time when all of us will go back home,” Ms Akello said.
 
The two women both remember Kony cutting a commanding presence. He claimed to be able to channel spirits, telling them that he was protected from bullets on the battlefield and able to predict the future.

Former LRA commanders, speaking anonymously, described the group’s leader with the same mixture of fear and reverence. One claimed  Kony’s eyes blazed red when a spirit took over.

Kony’s story began in the village of Odek, where he served as an altar boy at the local Catholic parish. He was “always laughing,” recalled Zakeo Onen, one of Kony’s cousins. They grew up together on the family homestead.

In some ways he was a child like any other. Kony paid attention in school and enjoyed swimming in a nearby stream. Yet according to Mr Onen, his cousin began to change until it seemed he had become “possessed”.

That transformation was rooted in wider upheaval. The Lord’s Resistance Army grew from the ashes of the Holy Spirit Movement, led by Alice Auma. The medium’s followers walked into battle against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s forces armed with rocks, convinced the stones would become grenades.

After Auma fled into exile in Kenya in 1987, Kony gathered the remnants of her troops to form the LRA. He bolstered its ranks by abducting tens of thousands of children to serve as soldiers, while he and his commanders took the girls for wives.

Kony’s stated aim was to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a new order based on the Ten Commandments. In practice, the LRA turned its weapons on the Acholi civilians of northern Uganda, attacking schools and villages across the region.

The Ugandan government responded with military force, deploying its army to fight the LRA. It  tortured and killed civilians in these battles, according to Human Rights Watch. The government also drove millions of people off their land, creating unprotected resettlement camps where disease and hunger were rife.

More influential in containing fighting was the Amnesty Act of 2000, which allowed any LRA combatants who surrendered to receive clemency and return home.

More than 12,900 members of the LRA walked out of the bush as a result. They underwent forgiveness rituals rooted in Acholi custom before returning to their farms and families.

Mr Onen himself joined the military, hoping that his cousin Kony would see him on the frontline and return home.

Then, in 2003, Uganda asked the newly formed International Criminal Court to step in. Indictments for Kony and four of his top lieutenants were the first the court ever delivered. Kony and his remaining forces fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they continued to abduct children and attack civilians.

One of the fighters who followed Kony into Congo was James, who spoke to The Telegraph using a pseudonym.

James was abducted at the age of 12, early in the war.  He rose slowly through the ranks to become a senior commander. He says the LRA abducted children like him because they made the best soldiers.

“[Kony’s] mission was to overthrow the government. To have good fighters, you need to have children who have no wives, who have no family,” he said.

James returned home two years ago. He wants Kony to be forgiven, just as he was, but fears the confirmation of charges at the ICC will prevent Kony from surrendering.

“He will never come back if he keeps hearing about this,” James said. He recalled how the LRA leader listened to the radio each night before going to sleep, switching between the BBC and Voice of America.

“He’s clearly watching and listening from the beginning to the end. And he’s planning all possible means not to reach this court,” said James.

For the ICC, the new hearings aim to focus the world’s attention on continued freedom of a brutal war criminal.

“It’s a moment to reinvigorate the fact that Joseph Kony remains a fugitive. We reinvigorate the interests of the international community to continue looking for Joseph Kony,” said Maria Kamara, the ICC spokesperson in Uganda.

At a time when the court’s significance is being questioned, returning to its first case is a reminder of the ICC’s power.

Defence lawyers for Kony called the ICC’s confirmation of charges an “enormous expense of time, money and effort for no benefit at all.”

On the streets of Gulu, questions abound. One of Kony’s sons, born in LRA captivity, wants simply to speak to his father.

“When conflicts happen, there is destruction and people lose lives, but only he has the answers,” said Kaidi, speaking under a nickname given to him by Kony.

To others, the ICC process is opaque and confusing.  
The first and only LRA commander tried at the ICC was Dominic Ongwen, a child soldier abducted by Kony who served as a brigade commander.

He was pronounced guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity similar to those with which Kony is charged, including attacking civilians and forcing other children in the LRA, in February 2021 and subsequently sentenced to 25 years in prison.

But Reparations have yet to be paid to Ongwen’s victims.

According to Scott Bartell, who manages ICC programs in Uganda through the Trust Fund for Victims, Ongwen’s will be “by far” the largest reparations order in the court’s history.

Mr Bartell says that the Trust Fund hopes to receive a list of those victims before the end of this year, at which point they can begin making payments to the most vulnerable. They also plan to support memorial and rehabilitation programmes.

“We need the list of victims. We also need the continued support of the donors,” Mr Bartell told The Telegraph. “It’s a challenge to go to the donor community and continuously say – here is another priority.”

For Kony’s victims, compensation cannot come soon enough.

Franka Akello, the woman who worked as a babysitter in Kony’s camp, is eager to see Kony tried. She wanted to attend the hearings in September but did not have the £4 for transport on a public taxi to attend the public screenings.

Ms Amony, once one of Kony’s wives, is now a peace activist. She asked simply: “When will this world come together to help victims?”

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