On Tuesday, September 9, 2025, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague began a landmark hearing, presenting evidence against Joseph Kony, the elusive Ugandan warlord accused of some of the most heinous crimes in recent African history. This proceeding marks the ICC’s first-ever in absentia hearing, a legal milestone that could shape the court’s approach to other high-profile fugitives in the future.
Kony, the founder and self-proclaimed prophet of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), faces 39 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity—including murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, and pillaging. According to UN estimates, the LRA’s decades-long campaign of terror resulted in at least 100,000 deaths and the abduction of some 60,000 children. The group’s brutality is infamous: children were forced to kill family members, abducted girls became sex slaves, and civilians suffered gruesome mutilations and executions. As reported by the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, these atrocities left indelible scars across northern Uganda and neighboring countries.
Despite the gravity of the charges, Joseph Kony remains at large. He has not been seen in public for nearly two decades and is widely believed to be hiding in the dense jungles straddling the Central African Republic and Sudan’s South Darfur region. Over the years, the LRA has dwindled from thousands of fighters to just a handful, scattered across Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic. Yet, Kony’s mythic reputation endures, a testament both to his elusiveness and the horror of his crimes.
The ICC’s in absentia hearing is not a trial—in fact, the court’s rules forbid trials without the accused present. Instead, the hearing allows prosecutors to lay out their case in detail, while Kony is represented by a defense lawyer in his absence. Judges will weigh the evidence and determine whether the charges are credible enough to proceed to trial if and when Kony is captured. As the BBC noted, this process is seen as a crucial test of the ICC’s ability to pursue justice even when suspects cannot be brought before the court.
For many Ugandans, the hearing is both a long-awaited reckoning and a reminder of justice delayed. Survivors and former abductees have watched the proceedings closely, hoping for some measure of closure. Odong Kajumba, who managed to escape the LRA after being forced to carry supplies to the Sudanese border in 1996, expressed a sentiment shared by many: “He did many things bad. If they can arrest Kony, I am very happy.” (Associated Press)
Kony’s path to infamy is as complex as it is chilling. Raised in a Catholic family among the Acholi people of northern Uganda, he once served as an altar boy. Yet, according to biographer Matthew Green in The Wizard of the Nile, elders soon saw in him the “occult gifts of the diviner,” and he became a figure of spiritual authority. Kony claimed to have received a spirit that commanded him to fight and overthrow Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, whose rise to power in 1986 had upended the Acholi’s political fortunes. As Green recounts, “Acolytes wearing bamboo rosaries gathered at his homestead, awaiting orders.”
Kony’s stated aim was to rule Uganda according to the biblical Ten Commandments. But his methods betrayed any claim to righteousness. The LRA’s guerrilla tactics—ambushing soldiers, terrorizing villages, and abducting children—forced hundreds of thousands into displacement camps. These government-imposed camps, meant to isolate the rebels, only deepened civilian suffering and failed to end the violence. The rebels’ mobility and brutality made them notoriously hard to track, and their attacks continued with impunity for years.
Among the most harrowing allegations presented in the ICC hearing are accounts of children compelled to commit murder, girls forced into sexual slavery, and gruesome rituals such as drinking victims’ blood or amputating limbs as punishment. In one particularly shocking incident cited by prosecutors, LRA fighters reportedly snatched a baby from an abductee, threw the infant into a river, and then attacked the mother with a machete. The group’s reign of terror extended to burning people alive in their homes and decapitating civilians in refugee camps, as detailed in the charge sheet reviewed by Agence France-Presse.
International efforts to capture Kony have been extensive but ultimately unsuccessful. In 2011, the United States deployed about 100 troops to support African Union forces searching for the warlord, later increasing the number to 250. The mission, which ended in 2017, failed to find Kony, though it severely weakened the LRA’s operational capacity. The U.S. continues to offer up to $5 million for information leading to his capture, a reward that underscores the enduring urgency of bringing him to justice.
Kony’s notoriety exploded in 2012, when the advocacy group Invisible Children released a viral online video, “Kony 2012,” which was viewed over 100 million times within days. The campaign brought global attention to the plight of LRA victims and galvanized support for efforts to apprehend Kony. Yet, despite the outcry and international resources marshaled against him, Kony remains a fugitive.
The current ICC hearing is scheduled to last three days, after which judges will decide if the evidence is sufficient to confirm the charges. However, as the ICC’s rules make clear, no trial can proceed in Kony’s absence. His defense counsel has criticized the hearing as “an enormous expense of time, money and effort for no benefit at all.” Prosecutors, on the other hand, argue that the process will expedite any future trial should Kony be arrested and, crucially, provide a sense of justice for the victims. As noted by Agence France-Presse, the ICC’s first arrest warrant—issued in 2005—was for Joseph Kony himself, underscoring his central place in the court’s mission to prosecute the world’s gravest crimes.
Kony, who was born in September 1961, has rarely spoken to outsiders. In a 2006 interview with a Western journalist, he denied the charges against him, insisting, “I am not a terrorist,” and dismissing reports of LRA atrocities as “just propaganda.” He also denied abducting children, a claim starkly contradicted by survivor testimony and the UN’s own findings.
While most of the LRA’s top commanders have been killed or captured—Dominic Ongwen, for example, is now serving a 25-year sentence and the ICC recently awarded 52 million euros to his victims—Kony’s freedom remains a painful symbol of unfinished justice. In his home region, many believe he will never be caught, his legend only growing with each year he evades capture.
As the ICC weighs the evidence in this historic hearing, the world watches to see if the pursuit of justice can outlast the shadows cast by one of Africa’s most wanted men.
