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The Monitor (Kampala)February 5, 2004
Posted to the web February 5, 2004 Frank Nyakairu
Kampala
A prominent American lawyer has been appointed to probe LRA rebel leader Joseph Kony's alleged crimes against humanity, the Wall Street Journal newspaper reported yesterday.The International Criminal Court (ICC) appointed Ms Christine Chung, a Harvard-trained lawyer who has prosecuted street gangs, mob bosses and boxing promoter Don King during a 12-year career at the U.S. attorney's office in New York.
Chung, 39, has no prior experience with war crimes or international tribunals.However, ICC Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said the former U.S. federal prosecutor was the best-qualified applicant.
Her former boss, US Deputy Attorney General James Comey, described her as "a brilliant lawyer and a great prosecutor who will serve any tribunal well."Moreno-Ocampo and President Museveni said in London recently that Uganda had referred Kony's case to the ICC, starting a process that could see the rebel leader tried before the permanent war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.The US State Department describes the Lord's Resistance Army as a terrorist group seeking to impose "a regime that will implement the group's brand of Christianity."
The minister of state for the rehabilitation of Northern Uganda, Ms Grace Akello, is currently collecting evidence in the north, which could possibly be used to indict Kony.The LRA is accused of mass abductions, rape and killings since 1988.
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
