Complex Political Perpetrators: Reflections On Dominic Ongwen

Complex political perpetrators: reflections on Dominic Ongwen. This article is about one of the most brutal rebel organizations of the world, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The author focuses on one particular case, Dominic Ongwen (Baines, 2009). When Ongwen was around ten years old, he was abducted by the LRA. He became a well trained and killing child soldier. Together with the hole army of LRA, Ongwen was forced to fight against the Government of Uganda (Baines, 2009). After a while, Ongwen became so loyal to the LRA that he was promoted to the inner circle of the LRA (Baines, 2009). This is when he became not only a former child soldier, but also a war criminal. He became both perpetrator and victim (Baines, 2009). ‘In October 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Ongwen for crimes against humanity, including massacres and the abduction and enslavement of children (Baines, 2009, pp. 163-164). With this announcement Ongwen became the first person to be charged with crimes of which he is also a victim (Baines, 2009). The situation of Ongwen might be an unique situation, but the status of perpetrator and victim all in one is not. Ongwen represents many other young rebels who happened the same thing (Baines, 2009). The author describes these youth with the concept of complex political perpetrators: ‘Youth who occupy extremely marginal spaces in settings of chronic crisis, and who use violence as an expression of political agency’ (Baines, 2009, p. 163). The author asked himself in the article what justice strategy the best strategy is for these complex political perpetrators (Baines, 2009). In the field of transitional justice is this kind of cases