What happened to Joseph Kony? From altar boy to warlord who abducted tens of thousands of boys and girls to become child soldiers or sex slaves but somehow evades justice

Daily Mail​

24-05-2025

From farmer's son and altar boy to self-proclaimed messiah, zealous rebel, ruthless warlord - and perhaps most frustrating of all for those seeking justice - master of evasion.
For the tens of thousands of Ugandans whose lives he decimated, Joseph Kony was - and remains - a loathsome figure, but without doubt his life now is a far cry from his more wholesome roots.
As the leader of The Lord's Resistance Army, a cultish militant group that operates in central Africa, he was said to be responsible for mass rape, kidnapping and murder - as well as the military enslavement of more than 30,000 children.
In 2005, he was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for a variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But despite endless efforts by skilled military personnel, Kony has continuously escaped capture and remains on the run as one of Africa's most wanted men.
Sources say that Kony is so adept at keeping out of the way of authorities that he has ditched satellite phones in favour of runners for communication with his supporters, while at times he has lived in the bush, surviving off wild roots and animals.
But life was not always this way.
Kony was born in 1961 as a member of Uganda's northern Acholi ethnic group to a family of six children. Both his parents were farmers and regular churchgoers, with his father being a Catholic, and his mother an Anglican.
He served as an altar boy until the age of 15, before rising to prominence in the Holy Spirit Movement, a rebel group led by Alice Auma Lakwena, a former prostitute believed to have been his aunt.
The movement was formed after Ugandan president Tito Okello, an Acholi, was overthrown in January 1986 by the National Resistance Army (NRA).
Lakwena, who died in exile in Kenya in early 2007, believed she could channel the spirits of the dead, and also told her followers that the holy oil she gave them could stop bullets.
The rebellion - which Kony eventually went on to lead - claimed to defend the Acholi people against NRA President Yoweri Museveni.
But when army troops crushed the movement and Lakwena fled into Kenya, Kony founded the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and proclaimed himself as the people's prophet.
Despite widespread northern resentment against Museveni, Kony's extremist policies - which were designed to terrify his subordinates into obedience - made him a figure of fear rather than admiration among his people.
Aspiring to rule Uganda according to a mix of mysticism, Acholi nationalism and Christian fundamentalism, Kony - a self-proclaimed spokesperson of God with more than 60 wives - turned against his supporters to 'purify' his people and carried out a series of horrific assaults, including rape and indiscriminate killings.
Kony forcibly recruited young boys to serve as his next generation of soldiers, while girls were kidnapped and kept as sex slaves.
His terrifying rule over Ugandans inspired a bloody rebellion that spread to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.
Tens of thousands of atrocities were carried out in the names of the LRA for more than two decades, but following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the group was officially designated as a terrorist group by the US governments.
It spelt the beginning of the end for his reign of terror.
By 2005, the self-proclaimed prophet - along with four of his deputies - were the first people indicted by the ICC in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Support for the LRA was beginning to wane. When Sudan signed a peace deal with the southern rebels in 2005 and the group was forced into neighbouring DR Congo by the Ugandan army, Kony agreed to hold peace talks.
But negotiations dragged on and, amid mutual distrust and anxiety over the ICC warrant, Kony repeatedly failed to turn up to sign a deal.
He decided instead to continue living on the run - sparking a widespread and prolonged manhunt that to the dismay of the world - and his victims - has still not reaped the reward of his capture.
So what has been up to since then?
Kony, who is thought to be in his 50s, speaks broken English and Acholi and has only rarely met outsiders, but in an interview with a western journalist in 2006 he insisted that he was 'not a terrorist' and had not committed atrocities.
'We want the people of Uganda to be free. We are fighting for democracy,' he claimed.
Nevertheless, ex-LRA abductees have a very different viewpoint. Some say they were forced to maim and kill friends, neighbours and relatives, as well as participate in gruesome rites such as drinking their victims' blood.
In late 2011, following pressure from US campaigners, President Barack Obama agreed to deploy US special forces troops to help local armies track down Kony.
He then surged to unexpected worldwide prominence in March 2012 on the back of a hugely popular internet video that called for his capture.
Made by US-based advocacy group Invisible Children, the Kony2012 film highlighted LRA's alleged crimes, including the abduction of children for use as sex slaves or fighters.
It became one of the fastest-spreading internet videos in history after more than 100 million users across the globe watched it in just a few days.
The story took another strange twist later that year when Angelina Jolie, Oscar-winning film star, international humanitarian, United Nations special envoy and all-round sex bomb, offered to come to the ICC's rescue - by offering herself as a honeytrap to capture Kony.
Documents leaked from the ICC show that Jolie had offered to be embedded with US Special Forces close to the warlord's stronghold in northern Uganda and 'has the idea to invite Kony to dinner and then arrest him'.
The plan apparently came to nothing more than a bizarre bookmark in a tale of a rebel leader who has still not been brought to justice.
Those efforts were further hampered in 2017 when Uganda's military and the United States both announced they would end their pursuit of Kony - saying its mission had been 'successfully achieved' even though the rebel leader remains at large.
Uganda started pulling its forces from Central African Republic, which for years had acted as a base for troops chasing the rebels, just a day after the US said the active membership of Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) now only numbered less than 100.
Before that decision, around 1,500 Ugandan troops had been deployed in Central African Republic under an African Union military mission to defeat the LRA.
With the troops now withdrawn, attention turned instead to one of Kony's former commanders, Dominic Ongwen, whose nom de guerre was 'White Ant'.
He was indicted by the ICC and convicted in 2021 of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ongwen is currently serving a 25-year jail sentence for 61 charges, including murder, rape and sexual enslavement
His lawyers had pleaded for mitigation considering he was one of Kony's child soldiers, having been kidnapped on the way to school by LRA militants aged just nine.
In October 2024, Thomas Kwoyelo - another former child soldier who later became a rebel commander under Kony - was sentenced by a court in Uganda to 40 years in prison for his role in the LRA's brutal crimes.
Kwoyelo will serve only 25 years in jail as he has been in government custody for 15 years, the court ruled.
His sentencing applied to the most serious crimes he faced, including multiple counts of murder, rape, pillaging, and enslavement.
Kwoyelo, who denied the charges against him, testified that only Kony could answer for LRA crimes, and said everyone in the LRA faced death for disobeying the warlord.
But Grace Apio, a Ugandan victim of the LRA insurgency, said at the time that the sentencing 'is very little for us, the victims.'
She added: 'We feel very bad...This sentence will encourage other people who want to start a war that in Uganda, after committing these atrocities, you will end up with a light sentence and then you come back to society and start your life again.'
Kwoyelo was convicted in August 2024 on 44 of the 78 counts he faced for crimes committed during the insurgency between 1992 and 2005.
News of Kony fell silent again until February of this year, when it was reported that one of his wives and three children had been repatriated from Central African Republic, Ugandan authorities said.
Then in April, the ICC confirmed the award of €52 million (£45m) to victims of Ongwen, including a 'symbolic' payment of €750 (£632) for each of the near 50,000 victims identified in the case.
ICC judges ruled Ongwen personally ordered his soldiers to carry out massacres of more than 130 civilians at the Lukodi, Pajule, Odek and Abok refugee camps between 2002 and 2005.
While the court acknowledged he had been kidnapped as a 'defenceless child', judges said this did not mitigate his guilt.
The court's Trust Fund for Victims will arrange for the reparations to be made as Ongwen - currently serving his sentence in a Norwegian prison - was unable to pay.
For Kony's victims these are all small steps towards the justice they have sought for more than 30 years.
But Kony himself remains at large - despite being wanted by the ICC and even with a generous $5m reward offered by US authorities.
Sources say he is hiding somewhere in ungoverned territories in Central African Republic - and is more than adept at remaining hidden.
For the ICC however, the charges against Kony are so horrific that they can no longer go unheard. For that reason, it plans to hold a hearing in absentia on September 9.
His victims can only hope that one day Kony himself will be the one to stand in court and hear them.