Uganda
The International Criminal Court today sentenced a former commander of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to 25 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Dominic Ongwen, a child soldier who rose to become one of the rebel group’s top leaders, was charged with 61 offences including murders, rapes and sexual enslavement. The defence had argued for a lighter sentence given Ongwen’s history. He was kidnapped by the LRA as a schoolboy and told the court that he was forced to eat beans covered in the blood of the first people he killed. The LRA, now largely defeated, was founded by Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed prophet who waged a 20-year war against the Ugandan government. Kony remains at large.
More from Al Jazeera here.
Mali
A French journalist appeared in a video today in which he said he had been kidnapped by an Islamist armed group in Mali. Olivier Dubois is an experienced reporter who has reported from the Sahel region for several French media organisations.
More from CNN here.
Iraq
Hair-raising tale out of Iraq. The country’s media regulator has cancelled a show in which celebrities were pranked into believing they were being attacked by militants.
The ambush re-enactments include fake weapons and stunt explosions while the “militants” threaten to detonate fake suicide vests.
Nuts. More from the Associated Press here.