Uganda refuses to hand over rebel leaders to war crimes court

The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, is headed for a confrontation with the international criminal court after saying he will not hand over to The Hague the leaders of his country's rebel Lord's Resistance Army indicted for war crimes. Museveni said Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, and his commanders will instead be brought before "traditional" Ugandan courts -- which emphasize apologies and compensation rather than punishment -- as part of a deal to end a 21-year civil war marked by the abduction of children as combatants, mass rape of women and the mutilation and murder of civilians. Museveni said local trials were the wish of the victims and leaders in the areas hit by the conflict. "What we have agreed with our people is that they should face traditional justice, which is more compensatory than a retributive system," he said on a visit to London. "That is what we have agreed at the request of the local community. They have been mainly tormenting people in one area and it is that community which asked us to use traditional justice." But critics have accused Museveni of misusing the ICC indictments as a bargaining tool to press Kony into a peace settlement. The court issued arrest warrants in 2005 for Kony and four of his commanders, two of whom are now believed to be dead, after Museveni appealed for the ICC to investigate the rebels' crimes. Under international law, Uganda is obliged to send the accused men for trial at The Hague. But the matter has opened a rift between African governments, which believe such trials should be subordinated to local peace deals and reconciliation, and countries such as Britain, which back the ICC as establishing international justice. Museveni told journalists that his government had the right to pull Kony out of the clutches of the ICC, as it had requested the court to investigate in the first place. But Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for the Bosnia and Rwanda international tribunals which laid the ground for the ICC, has said that if Museveni gets his way it would be "fatally damaging to the credibility" of the court. "I just don't accept that Museveni has any right to use the international criminal court like this," he said last year. "If you have a system of international justice you've got to follow through on it. If in some cases that's going to make peace negotiations difficult that may be the price that has to be paid." Last week, the ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, refused to meet representatives of the LRA and said the indictments still stand. There is also controversy at another international tribunal, judging war crimes in Sierra Leone, over a decision by judges to give diminished prison sentences of six and eight years to two men convicted of murdering and mutilating civilians because they were fighting to restore an elected government to power. Prosecutors began their appeal for a higher tariff on Mar. 12 for Moinina Fofana and Allieu Kondewa of the Civil Defense Forces who were convicted of "barbaric" and "brutal" crimes "on a large scale." In handing down lesser sentences, the court said the CDF "was a fighting force that was mobilized and was implicated in the conflict in Sierra Leone to support a legitimate cause which... was to restore the democratically elected government." The appeals hearing will consider whether political motivation can be used as mitigation in sentencing. Human Rights Watch said the issue was of "major significance" to the enforcement of international humanitarian law. "All parties to armed conflict must abide by the same rules and must be subject to the same punishment when those rules are violated regardless of political motives or ultimate victory in waging war," it said. "To find less worthy of punishment atrocities against civilians committed while in pursuit of the alleged 'right' cause sets a dangerous precedent which risks undermining the accountability and potential deterrent role of prosecutions and thereby diminishing civilian protection."