ICC Says Ugandan Warlord Joseph Kony Still Alive and Active After 20-Year Manhunt

The International Criminal Court's lead investigator on Joseph Kony says the fugitive Ugandan warlord is still alive and active within the Lord's Resistance Army, more than two decades after the court issued an arrest warrant for him. Leonie von Braun, a senior trial lawyer at the ICC, told France 24 that the latest information indicates Kony remains part of the group and is "very much present" within it. Given his reported age of 65, she said, he is likely no longer on the front lines of operations.

Concern about the LRA has resurfaced in recent months, with Central African authorities worried about a renewed wave of attacks in the east and southeast of the country. At least 25 children were abducted during raids on villages in attacks attributed to Kony's militia, according to France 24. Von Braun said the group is far weaker than in the 2000s, when it operated four brigades of several hundred fighters each, but it remains armed and ready to commit violence.

Kony founded the LRA in 1987 with the aim of overthrowing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and establishing a theocratic regime based on the Ten Commandments. Its insurgency ranks among Africa's longest and most brutal conflicts, claiming more than 100,000 lives and displacing over two million people, mainly in northern Uganda, according to the UN. The group became notorious for massacres and the mass abduction of children, who were forced to fight or subjected to sexual exploitation.

Von Braun said the LRA's recruitment of children is driven less by religious doctrine than by violence. She characterized the group as a syncretic movement blending Christianity with local beliefs, tracing its roots to the Holy Spirit Movement founded in the 1980s by Alice Auma, who claimed to receive orders from a spirit she called Lakwena. Children undergo violent initiation rites and are then subjected to severe discipline designed to extract total obedience, including beatings for infractions such as dropping a pot of food, she said.

Uganda's army drove the LRA out of the country in 2006, after which the group remained active in isolated border areas of Central Africa and set up camps in remote parts of the region. Von Braun attributed Kony's ability to evade capture to his knowledge of the terrain, his physical and psychological resilience, and a technologically simple but highly effective intelligence network. She added that the large number of children in the group complicates any operation against it, since planners must account for the risk to unarmed people who are not combatants.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Kony in 2005, and the United States offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture as part of an intensive manhunt. Von Braun said the case, covering crimes committed between July 2002 and December 2005, is the largest the court has handled involving crimes against children. Noting that the ICC has no police force of its own and depends on state cooperation to execute warrants, she said the court remains convinced Kony can still be brought to justice.