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Captured LRA Fighter Bound for International Criminal Court


The entrance of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
The entrance of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Captured Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen was flown to the capital of Central African Republic on Friday and handed over to representatives of the International Criminal Court, the country's state prosecutor said.

Ongwen, a former child soldier who faces charges of crimes against humanity, will be flown to the ICC headquarters in The Hague on Saturday, prosecutor Ghislain Grezengue said.

"Dominic Ongwen has been transferred to Bangui,'' Grezengue said. "I came back from Obo [in the east of the country], where we went to get him from. We have already handed him over to ICC representatives, who will take him to the court tomorrow.''

The LRA rose up against the government in northern Uganda under the leadership of Joseph Kony in the late 1980s. Having earned a reputation for carrying out massacres and mutilating victims, LRA fighters left Uganda about a decade ago and have roamed across parts of Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and CAR since then, eluding efforts to defeat them.

U.S. forces helping African nations track the LRA said this week that they had detained a man claiming to be Ongwen. Seleka rebels in Central African Republic said they had captured him and were demanding that Washington pay them a bounty of up to $5 million.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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