Ugandan and Congo cases go hand in hand before the ICC

Henceforth, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and northern Uganda will be the first cases to be studied by the International Criminal Court (ICC). On 6 July, the Court announced that the both cases have been placed under the authority of the pre-trial chambers. The main armed group the Court will be probing in Uganda is the Lord\'s Resistance Army (LRA). Recently, the rebel movement suffered a setback with the capture, announced by Kampala on 13 July, of one of its main leaders, the seventy-year-old Kenneth Banya. The latter is believed to be the closest advisor to the LRA leader Joseph Kony. For President Museveni it is the most important arrest since the start of the rebellion eighteen years ago. By the end of June, the Ugandan army had already netted another top-ranking LRA officer, lieutenant-colonel Francis Okwonga Alero. The ICC prosecutor, keen to defuse criticism by certain human rights groups, stated that he would be investigating all crimes committed in northern Uganda, whoever the alleged perpetrators. In other words, in theory he will not be excluding the responsibility of armed forces under President Museveni. Indeed, the same troops could also be implicated in investigations into the Ituri massacres in DRC.