The International Criminal Court (ICC) has rejected Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s plan to offer amnesty to Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The ICC, which indicted him on 33 counts for crimes committed in northern Uganda, insists he must be arrested and face justice.
”The governments of Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo are obligated to give effect to the arrest warrants, and we are confident that they will honour their joint commitment to do so,” said acting ICC spokesperson Christian Palme.
Apart from Kony, the other indictees are LRA commanders Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya. According to the ICC, each is charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, committed in Uganda since July 2002, in the context of a 20-year campaign of brutality against civilians.
Last week, Museveni pledged to grant Kony total amnesty if the rebel leader responded positively to peace talks due to start in southern Sudan next week.
”The Ugandan government will grant total amnesty [to Kony] despite the ICC indictments if he responds positively to the talks with the government in Juba, southern Sudan, and abandons terrorism,” Museveni’s office said in a statement.
Saying he would not respond to international pressure to have the rebel leader, whom he previously likened to Adolf Hitler, arrested, the president blamed the international community for failure to cooperate with him in his war against the LRA.
”To hand over Kony after he has come out him-self, that’s out,” Museveni told Walter Kälin, the UN secretary general’s representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons.
Criticising the UN, Museveni claimed that the ”noble cause of trying Kony before the ICC had been betrayed by the failure of the UN, which set up the court, to arrest him, despite knowing his location in the DRC’s Garamba National Park.”
The UN system would, he added, therefore have no moral authority to demand that Kony stand trial after failing to arrest him for the nine months he has been in the Congo, and has even killed UN troops. ”I am sending my people to talk to Kony because I have no partners [on arresting him],” he said.
His latest gesture to the rebels, who are being blamed for a number of atrocities, was ”to assist the SPLA [southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army] government. We don’t want to put burdens on the young government of southern Sudan,” he said.
Archbishop John Baptist Odama of the Gulu Roman Catholic diocese, which is at the centre of Kony’s 20year-old conflict, described Museveni’s announcement as ”positive because it encourages peace negotiations to go on”.
Odama added: ”We know people suffered in the war, but this should be decided in other fora. Those with grievances will come out and express them to the relevant authorities after we have achieved peace. We hope the ICC does not interfere with the peace process going on in the Sudan, because we want the people of northern Uganda to see peace.”