Angelo Izama
On January 15, 2004, Manuela Diallo, an assistant to Luis Moreno-Ocampo the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) faxed a draft copy of a letter that Mr Ocampo planned to eventually send to President Yoweri Museveni.
The letter, a copy of which Sunday Monitor has seen, was faxed to the second ranking official at Uganda’s mission in New York, Ambassador Adonia Ayebare, who also happened to be a personal friend of Mr Ocampo.
Mr Ayebare’s name has since featured in various interviews as the diplomat responsible who played a key role in getting the President to agree to Uganda secretly referring the matter of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels’ alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes to the ICC in December 2003.
This piece of correspondence that was addressed to President Museveni goes a long way in explaining Uganda’s secret dealings with the ICC, its involvement in the indictment of the LRA’s leaders that piled the pressure on the insurgents, forcing them to flee Sudan at the end of 2005, amidst calls for their arrest and trial for war crimes.
Mr Ocampo, who has been accused in the past of being partial to the Ugandan authorities, has always claimed that he was not investigating one side of the conflict. But the bare facts in this letter (Ref. OTP/040115/UGLTR/02) tell a completely different story, and in fact confirm the suspicion that he was quietly in bed with one of the interested parties to the conflict.
For instance, it reads in part: “In my view meaningful peace in Africa requires strong African leadership” in reference to his interlocutor (President Museveni), adding “I am confident that the successful investigation and prosecution of those bearing the greatest responsibility for the crimes committed in the North will be a critical contribution to achieving lasting peace”.
Mr Ocampo then said “It will, of course be for Uganda, to decide on how to deal with any remaining issues connected to the crimes committed”. He also expresses concerns over how confidential Uganda’s referral of the LRA could be kept and suggests that the issue be made public so as to garner support.
“However, the decision of when and where to publicise the referral is for you (President Museveni),” he writes, ending “be assured of my highest consideration of the matter”.
On January 29, 2004, two weeks after this correspondence, indeed Mr Ocampo and President Museveni stood side by side and confirmed that Uganda had indeed referred the LRA case to the world court.
The indictment of the top LRA commanders has provided the ICC with its first high profile case. At a personal level, it has handed Mr Ocampo the sort of controversy that he badly needed to divert the attention of the world media cameras to The Hague and himself.
The government of Uganda meanwhile has used the involvement of the court to apply pressure on the elusive rebel group and their allies in the government of Sudan’s Omar El Bashir, the present net effect of which was Khartoum being forced to get rebel leader Joseph Kony to shift his outfit to the Garamba Forest of the DR Congo.
While the court is yet to prosecute a single LRA leader, its involvement has had the effect of rendering the LRA under a perpetual siege even if they have made the lifting of the ICC warrants of arrest a precondition for successful conclusion of the Juba peace process.
Last week, Mr Kony and a group of his most trusted fighters were walking towards the Sudanese border post of Nabanga, ostensibly to meet with the Vice President of the Government of South Sudan, Dr Riek Machar. Some say the LRA is tired, Kony is dispirited and afraid and that the prospects for the group ever escaping the dragnet of international human rights law and regional military action appear ever dimmer.
But the opposite view is that emboldened by the supply of new provisions (military and otherwise) from as yet unnamed quarters, the LRA that has been on an abduction campaign on the outer reaches of the Central African Republic (CAR) is actually preparing for a new shooting war. There are reports of training underway in both the DR Congo and CAR.
Kony’s options have not always been so dim but for the referral which changed his status from the brutal abductor of children and butcher of old women to an internationally wanted criminal in January of 2004.
Ambassador Ayebare who sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs say is busy trying to find a solution to unravelling peace process in Burundi, did not return Sunday Monitor’s request for an interview.
However, informed sources confirm that the ambassador and Mr Ocampo had known each during the time when the present Chief Prosecutor of the ICC was still running a legal practice in Argentina.
That relationship played a useful part in securing a meeting for Mr Ocampo with President Museveni at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in London in 2004. The closed door meeting was kept away from senior members of Museveni’s entourage.
Human rights groups and local NGO’s have criticised the ICC warrants as being a stumbling block to peace in Northern Uganda but others have gone further to say that Ocampo’s personal relationship with the Ugandan authorities has closed the door to any future investigation of the Ugandan army for its alleged part in the commission of atrocities in Northern Uganda.
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