Hearings for a trial of fugitive Ugandan rebel commander Joseph Kony began today at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Kony has been wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity since 2005, making him the ICC’s longest-standing fugitive.
The founder of the Lords Resistance Army, a militia that has fought against the Ugandan government since 1987, Kony has been accused of abducting at least 60,000 children to use as child soldiers and sex slaves.
Deputy prosecutor of the ICC Mame Mandiaye Niang said that the court hopes to charge him with 39 separate counts, including murder, rape, the use of child soldiers, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy.
In 2012, Joseph Kony was the subject of a viral online campaign to bring him to justice, called Kony2012.
African Union troops began a major search for the rebel commander in 2012, supported by US soldiers, but the mission ended several years later without Kony’s capture.
The hearings today mark the start of the ICC’s first attempt to prosecute a suspected war criminal in absentia – without their physical presence in the courtroom.
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Legal experts said that the trial could serve as a blueprint for future proceedings against other suspects whose capture may prove difficult, such as Russian president Vladimir Putin and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Prosecutors “have their eyes in the long run on the possibility of using this procedure against Putin or Netanyahu if they continue to elude justice year after year,” says international law professor Michael Scharf of Case Western Reserve University.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant against Putin in 2023, accusing him of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, which is a war crime. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the charges.
Read Sky’s investigation: Ukraine’s missing children
Netanyahu was issued with an arrest warrant in November 2024, with the ICC charging the Israeli leader with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including murder and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Israel has denied the accusations and rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction, and the US has sanctioned ICC prosecutors involved in the case.
