ICC to present evidence against Joseph Kony in first in absentia hearing

International Criminal Court prosecutors will present evidence on Tuesday to back up charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against notorious fugitive Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony at the global court’s first-ever in absentia hearing.

Kony faces dozens of counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, sexual enslavement and rape for allegedly leading the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army that terrorised northern Uganda.

Moving forward without Kony is seen as a test case for other proceedings where the suspect is not in custody, for example Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The hearing is not a trial, but allows prosecutors to outline their case in court. Kony will be represented in his absence by a defense lawyer. After weighing the evidence, judges can rule on whether or not to confirm the charges against Kony, but he cannot be tried in his absence.

By 2005, facing pressure from Uganda’s military, Kony's LRA had been weakened and its members forced to splinter and flee into neighbouring countries, including Sudan and Congo, where they settled into wide expanses of ungoverned bush.

Proceedings against Kony will be followed by many in Uganda, where survivors welcome his trial even as they regret the failure to catch him. “He did many things bad,” said Odong Kajumba, who escaped the LRA after he was captured and forced to carry a sack of sugar to Uganda’s border with Sudan in 1996. If they can arrest Kony, he said, “I am very happy.”

Here are some things to know about Kony:

A religious boy

Raised in a Catholic family among the Acholi people of northern Uganda, Kony once served as an altar boy. His elders saw in him the occult gifts of the diviner and others began consulting him for advice on everything from curing infertility to lifting curses. “Some said he would sit in his hut with a hand placed on a Bible, or peer into a cracked shard of mirror to foretell the future,” the LRA biographer Matthew Green wrote in “The Wizard of the Nile.”

Kony seized his moment as a local leader with the rise to power in 1986 of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, whose guerrilla army had toppled government forces substantially drawn from Kony’s tribe. In Green’s account, Kony gathered people to tell them he had received a spirit that asked him to fight and overthrow Museveni: “Acolytes wearing bamboo rosaries gathered at his homestead, awaiting orders.” Kony left his village in April 1987 with 11 followers to begin his movement, whose stated goal was to rule the East African country according to the biblical 10 Commandments.

A feared warlord

Kony’s guerrilla campaign, with its reliance on ambushing government soldiers and others, terrorised local people even more. Attacks on villages, or fear of impending attacks, often forced many civilians to flee their remote homes in search of relative safety in nearby towns. The rebels were known to be highly mobile, hard to track. In the mid-1990s, Ugandan authorities forced hundreds of thousands of civilians into camps for the internally displaced in efforts to isolate the rebels.

That decision was criticised by local leaders, rights activists and others who said it exacerbated the people’s suffering while doing little to eradicate the LRA, whose attacks continued. The rebels abducted boys and girls in sporadic attacks, and other alleged acts of cruelty included chopping off limbs. With every successful attack Kony’s reputation as a fearsome warlord grew. Ugandan officials say Kony had his deputy, Vincent Otti, killed when Otti appeared interested in a peace deal with the government.

A fugitive hunted by the US

In 2011, the United States sent about 100 troops to help African Union forces find Kony, a number that later grew to about 250. The effort degraded the LRA, but Kony himself remained elusive. A year later, Kony shot to international notoriety after the advocacy group Invisible Children made a popular online video highlighting his crimes, especially those against children.

Washington has offered up to $5 million in rewards for information leading to Kony’s capture. Ugandan officials have long said they believe Kony is alive and possibly hiding in the lawless border region between Central African Republic and Sudan’s South Darfur region. Most of the LRA's top commanders have either been killed or captured while Kony somehow survives, adding to the myth surrounding the warlord. Many in his home area believe Kony will never be caught.