Dominic Ongwen

Dominic Ongwen (born 1975) is a Ugandan former child soldier and former commander of one of the brigades of the Ugandan guerrilla group Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Dominic Okumu Savio (his birth name) was born in the village of Choorum, Kilak County, Amuru district, Northern Uganda around 1975, the fourth son of Ronald Owiya and Alexy Acayo, two schoolteachers living in Paibona.

His parents, like most others in Acoliland at the time, gave him a false name and trained him to use it if ever he was abducted, to protect the rest of the family.

This name, Ongwen, means "born at the time of the white ant".

It was later to become his nom de guerre.

Ongwen was abducted by the LRA as he walked to Abili Primary School in Koro.

According to his own testimony this happened in 1988 when he was fourteen.

However it has often been reported that he was nine or ten, and also that he was carried by other captives all the way up to the LRA's main military bases because he was 'too little to walk'.

When Ongwen's mother heard that he had been kidnapped, she refused to run away with the other villagers saying she was ready to face the rebels.

On their return, they found her dead and his father was later found dead too.

According to Private Eye, as a child Ongwen tried to escape; when caught he was forced to skin one of the others alive.

Later, he had forced female prisoners to beat other prisoners to death, and he presided over death by stoning.

Once abducted, he underwent initiation ceremonies which included torture and being forced to watch violent rituals of people being killed.

He was subsequently indoctrinated under the tutelage of Vincent Otti, while still a child, as an LRA fighter.

He then rose within the ranks becoming a major at the age of 18 and brigadier of the Sinia Brigade, one of the four LRA brigades, by his late twenties.

Ongwen was a member of the "Control Altar" of the LRA that directs military strategy.

During his time with the LRA, Ongwen had multiple wives, including Jennifer, Santa (Min Tata), Margaret, Florence Ayot, Agnes Aber (Min Ayari), Fatuma and Nancy Abwot.

It was in 1993 that Florence Ayot, herself an abductee, was "transferred" to Ongwen after her own husband died.

He also fathered at least eleven children, four of them with Florence Ayot.

Some sources claim he had "more than 20 children".

Ayot later testified to the ICC that Ongwen, along with two other commanders and herself, had plotted to escape but their plan was discovered and Ongwen was demoted, disarmed and imprisoned for more than two weeks.

The expanded charges against Dominic Ongwen also include sexual and gender-based crimes committed from 2002 to 2005 in Sinia Brigade – forced marriage, rape, torture, sexual slavery, and enslavement – and the conscription and use of children under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities from 2002 to 2005, in Sinia Brigade.

The crimes were allegedly committed on or about 20 May 2004 at the Lukodi IDP Camp in the Gulu District, Uganda.

The charges all relate to an attack on a camp for internally displaced people in Uganda in 2004.

Ongwen was reported killed in combat with a unit of the Uganda People's Defence Force on 10 October 2005, and the identity of the body was confirmed by former LRA commanders.

Ongwen was the lowest ranking of the five LRA leaders for whom the ICC issued their first ever warrants in June 2005.

He is the only one whom the court succeeded in detaining, and, with the exception of the leader, Joseph Kony, is the only one now left alive.

He was initially charged with four counts of war crimes (murder, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population and pillaging) and three counts of crimes against humanity (murder, enslavement, and inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering).

However, in July 2006, the ICC reported that genetic fingerprinting of the body confirmed that it was not Ongwen's. News reports of the time put Ongwen in southwest Equatoria, Southern Sudan, attempting to rejoin LRA head Joseph Kony in Garamba, Ituri Province, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ongwen and a former wife featured in a film Picking up the Pieces by IRIN and released in October 2007.

Uganda People's Defence Force spokesperson Maj. Felix Kulayije commented, "Unfortunately, the bastard is still alive."

In 2013, US offered a $5m (£3.3m) reward for information leading to his arrest.

He was detained in 2014 and in 2021 the International Criminal Court convicted him of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, torture, and enslavement.

At the end of 2014, Ongwen escaped detention by Joseph Kony for having disobeyed Kony's orders and having refused to answer Kony's radio messages.

Having escaped the camp near Songo, in Kafia Kingi, Ongwen came across nomadic cattle herders who took him to a Seleka rebel group near Sam Ouandja in CAR.

The former Seleka group commander reached out to a merchant in Mboki, who in turn called an NGO worker in Obo.

On 21 December 2015, the ICC charged Dominic Ongwen with crimes in addition to those set out in the warrant of arrest: a total of seventy counts.

The additional charges related to attacks on the Pajule IDP camp, the Odek IDP camp and the Abok IDP camp.

The counts brought against the suspect in the context of these attacks include attacks against the civilian population, murder, attempted murder, torture, cruel treatment, other inhumane acts, enslavement, outrages upon personal dignity, pillaging, destruction of property, and persecution.

The charges are based on evidence which included witness statements or transcripts of interviews of a total of 123 witnesses, records of intercepted LRA radio communications, and oral testimonies of seven witnesses in September and November 2015.