The World’s Most-Wanted Fugitives
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest
warrants for these infamous figures
by
Beth Rowen
Many of the world’s most detested figures are accused of
committing war crimes against their
own people, against political opponents, and against innocent civilians who
happen to live in an area of dispute.
In 1998 the UN General Assembly
voted to authorize a treaty that established a permanent international court
to try those accused of war crimes, genocide, crimes of aggression, and
crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court formally opened on
July 1, 2002, at The Hague. The ICC can only prosecute crimes committed
after its founding, in 2002.
The following suspects are at the top of
the ICC’s most-wanted list for crimes against humanity.
Joseph Kony, Okot Odhiambo, and Dominic
Ongwen
Uganda
The government of Uganda has been at war
for nearly 20 years with Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
About 10,000 children have been abducted by the LRA to form the army of
“prophet” Kony, whose aim is to take over Uganda and run it
according to his vision of Christianity. The boys are turned into soldiers
and the girls into sex slaves. Up to 1.5 million people in northern Uganda
have been displaced because of the fighting and the fear that their children
will be abducted. Kony and three other top LRA leaders, Okot Odhiambo,
Dominic Ongwen, and Vincent Otti, have been indicted on charges of crimes
against humanity by the ICC. There have been reports that Odhiambo was
killed in early 2008 in fighting between members of the LRA over the peace
deal. His death has not been confirmed, however.
Abd Al Rahman and
Ahmad Harun
Sudan
In Feb. 2007, the ICC named Ahmad
Harun, Sudan's deputy minister for humanitarian affairs, and Ali Kushayb,
also known as Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a janjaweed militia leader, as suspects in
the murder, rape, and displacement of thousands of civilians in the
country’s Darfur region. In May 2007, the ICC issued an arrest warrant
for Harun, charging him with mass murder, rape, and other crimes. The
Sudanese government has refused to hand him over to the Court. Sudan
arrested Kushayb in October 2008. More than 200,000 people have been killed
and 2.5 million have become refugees since the conflict in Darfur began in early 2004, in which the
janjaweed—the pro-government Arabic militias—has been
slaughtering black villagers and rebel groups with impunity.
Bosco
Ntaganda
Democratic Republic of Congo
Ntaganda, the
head of military operations for a militia called the National Congress for
the Defense of the People (CNDP), oversaw seven camps in which children were
trained as fighters to participate in Congo's complex four-year civil war.
The war involved seven foreign armies and numerous rebel groups that often
fought among themselves. More than 2.5 million people are estimated to have
died in the war, which raged from 1999 to 2003. Known as the
“Terminator,” Ntaganda also allegedly led the child soldiers in
war.
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