Ugandan Ongwen was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army at the age of nine. Twenty-five years later, a trial is to establish whether the victim turned perpetrator

On the outskirts of The Hague, behind battlements, huge walls and the bars of a small, neat cell in Scheveningen prison stands a notorious former militiaman from northern Uganda called Dominic Ongwen. The 35-year-old was one of the most feared leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a violent cult blamed for the deaths of around 100,000 people and the abduction of 60,000 children.

Few expected Ongwen’s 20-year LRA “career” – which took in rape, massacres and abductions – to end in detention in a Dutch prison. But Ongwen gave himself up to soldiers in the Central African Republic last year and, after being passed to US troops, was brought to the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague.

Ongwen is now one of a group of former dictators and warlords detained in Scheveningen who face trial for serious crimes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dominic Ongwen in his former life in the LRA. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

When Ongwen stood in the dock for a pre-trial hearing, his trademark dreadlocks clipped and his battle fatigues replaced by a dark suit, he said he was “unemployed” when asked his occupation, before confessing he had been “a soldier in the LRA”.

This week a judge is expected to order the full trial to go ahead. But there is a twist, with important legal ramifications: Ongwen was a child soldier, abducted by the LRA when he was nine years old, it is believed. He is thus both perpetrator and, his legal team argue, a victim.

The LRA waged war across five countries in east and central Africa for nearly 30 years, and were notorious for chopping off limbs as punishment, as well as kidnapping and raping young girls. The group is now believed to comprise no more than a few hundred fighters.

Of the five senior LRA commanders indicted by the ICC 11 years ago, only Ongwen and his former leader, Joseph Kony, are still alive. Despite a $5m (£3.5m) reward for information leading to his capture, Kony remains elusive.

Ongwen faces life in prison if he is convicted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, pillage and enslavement. He has pleaded not guilty.

“It is an important case like all others before the ICC. They all involve mass crimes,” said Fadi El Abdallah, the court’s spokesman. But the Ongwen case is important for other reasons too.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lord’s Resistance Army fighters emerge from thick bush near Ri-Kwangba on southern Sudan’s border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in September 2008. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The ICC was set up to be an independent international “court of last resort” for grave crimes that could not be dealt with locally. But in the 14 years since it came into existence, the court, which is asking for funding for a €153m budget, has only secured two relatively minor convictions.

Huge resources have been invested in building a case against the LRA leaders, whose arrest warrants were the first issued by the court. Ongwen’s trial is a big test for prosecutors, some observers say.

The case is also complicated by other issues. The prosecution will emphasise the former LRA commander’s competence, loyalty and aggression, pointing out that he won rapid promotion. Defence lawyers will argue much of the evidence against Ongwen is unreliable and his notoriety a consequence of the arrest warrant issued a decade ago.

And they will stress how their client is a victim too. “He was tortured … forced to watch people being killed, was used for fighting as a child soldier. Even the prosecution have said that what he went through is a serious mitigating factor,” said Thomas Obhof, a US lawyer who is based in Uganda and part of the defence team.

The specific charges at the ICC focus on a series of attacks on refugee camps in northern Uganda between 2004 and 2005. Ongwen has also been blamed for scores of other atrocities.

One of the worst involved a four-day raid on camps in north-eastern Congo in December 2009, in which around 350 civilians were killed and another 250, including at least 80 children, were abducted.

Some Ugandans believe Ongwen is being made a scapegoat, while others have called for forgiveness. “I want Mr Ongwen to be forgiven as some of us [other] rebel abductees have been forgiven because the Bible says we should forgive,” Dominic Ecodu, who spent 10 years with the LRA after being abducted at the age of seven, told a local newspaper.

In 2000, Uganda pardoned thousands of former LRA fighters, including some who were volunteers. However, others are unwilling to forgive or forget.

Joseph Akweyu Manoba, a Ugandan lawyer appointed by the ICC to represent 1,500 of Ongwen’s victims, said not one of them believed Ongwen was himself a victim. “They tell me that if the ICC doesn’t punish him and he returns to Uganda then they will kill him themselves,” Manoba said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA, is still at large despite a $5m bounty on his head. Photograph: AP

Victor Ochen, director of the African Youth Initiative Network, said Ongwen was the “tip of the spear” of the LRA and known for extreme cruelty toward anyone who tried to escape the militia. “He destroyed the life and future of millions of young people. We hope to never see him free again. Imagine what sort of a signal that would send,” said Ochen, whose elder brother was abducted by the LRA in 2003 and never seen again.

Another issue raised by the case is whether the ICC unfairly targets Africa and African leaders. Critics point out that nine of the 10 “situations” currently being examined by the court are African. An investigation into possible crimes against humanity in Georgia was added earlier this year.

Current high-profile ICC trials include that of Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast, who denies charges that he orchestrated “unspeakable violence” in an attempt to hold on to power after losing an election in 2010, and that of Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, who is accused of razing medieval shrines, tombs and a 15th century mosque that formed part of the Unesco world heritage site in Timbuktu, Mali, when the city was seized by Islamic militants in 2012.

“The ICC has mishandled the politics by over-focusing on Africa,” said Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at Chatham House, London.

Abdallah, the ICC spokesman, said the court had opened preliminary investigations into potential crimes in Colombia, Ukraine, Palestine and elsewhere. One inquiry is looking at allegations against British troops in Iraq.

“Investigations are not opened against particular nation states or personalities. They are opened for the benefit of victims. There are thousands and thousands of African victims … It is not against Africa but about trying to give Africans the justice they want and deserve,” Abdallah said.