Thomas Obhof, Ongwen's defence lawyer speaks out

Feb 02, 2016

A Ugandan journalist Andrew Arinaitwe, interviewed Ongwen’s defence lawyer, Thomas Obhof. Below are the excerpts

On January 21, a key pre-trial hearing in the case against Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) commander, Dominic Ongwen started at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

A Ugandan journalist Andrew Arinaitwe, interviewed Ongwen's defence lawyer, Thomas Obhof. Below are the excerpts

The Queen's Counsel are notably the best lawyers and you don't have one on your team, don't you think you will not satisfactorily represent Ongwen?

A lot of people place the Queen's Counsel way up.

These include England, New Zealand, Australia and a few others. The reasons they are so qualified is equivalent to those of senior counsels in Kenya who are experienced and that is the same with Crispus Ayena Odongo who has been a lawyer for 31 years.

Ayena was part of the peace process and knows his people. I have worked with the Queen's Counsel and Senior Counsel in Kenya, Canada, Netherlands and USA.

It is the experience that makes you a good attorney and knowledge of individual cases and what would a Queen's Counsel do better than Ayena?

It would be hard to say they would. A lot of time we are down there in Uganda interviewing people and they meet us because they trust us because of Ayena being the attorney and well if we had a big QC (Queen's Counsel) from the U.K; it would have been a little harder to meet people and a lot of people we eventually talked to. We have people from every major tribunal.

I worked here (ICC) for five years on Maj. Gen. Ali's case, on President Uhuru's case and on Charles Bl'e Goude's case as an advisor. Now this case. Some have worked at the special court in Sierra Leaone, in Africa and Middle East.

We have a variety of people inside there, the best is being able to mix and match skills. In normal cases, one receives one QC (Queen's Counsel) in total.

Here the best thing is for Ongwen to have the team he has. You have people putting in time and reading 75-80,000 pages of evidence and we are doing it with a smile on our faces.

Where do you get the resources to be able to investigate?

The ICC has a legal aid policy for people who are indigent, which was revamped in June 4, 2012. I am not sure of exact date. It states how such funding can be got.

There is a budget for every case dealing with Articles 6,7,8 and those budgets are right now at Euro73,006 total, for investigations including planning flights down there, reimbursing witnesses to take work off, to travel, to meet us or we have to travel. We are supplementing.

I live there and our investigator has a place in Gulu and it works out really well. We save some money or budget and when it comes to salary, we do the same thing. We have a bigger legal team because it is usually three.

Can you specify how much your salary is?

The legal policy specifies this in the public document. The lead counsel gets in the range of 82-21 and the assistant counsel is 48-89.

Is that in thousands of euros?

Yes. The case manager gets Euro 39, 000 - 74,000, that is based upon how you split the funds, if you want more people. That's what they allot for us.

We have heard concerns that Ongwen was not visited by his famil. Is it possible?

He is allowed, the only one problem for us attorneys is the professional violation of the code of conduct to pay for the flight for the families to come here.

That is one of the many reasons we wanted the hearing to take place in Gulu. We have solicited for funds to fly them out from many organisations. I will not name them because of the respect I have on them and they have all declined.
 
However, we are still looking for from several other organisations to bring the cousins, aunties, uncles and grandmother to see him though I do not know if his grandmother is able to.

Is the Government of Uganda assisting you in investigations?

No, the Government of Uganda is not directly assisting us. There is always indirect assistance, for example if we say we go here they will assist but they do not give us funds or Police escorts.

Have they extended a hand to assist you somewhere somehow?

We have asked for certain things and they have said yes, we will help you. So we have asked for documents to meet certain people. But it is slow. That is in every government in the world. They have been willing to assist in these areas. However, when you are dealing with certain issue, there are some you do not want the government to know.

So which are the nationalities on your defence team, can you give us the names starting with lead counsel?

Crispus Ayena Odongo our lead counsel, Ugandan Member of Parliament Oyam North, myself from Ohio in the US, Michelle Oliel from Ontario, Canada, Abigail Bridgeman from Uganda, Roy Titus Ayena also from Uganda and our investigators and assistant investigator are both from Uganda but I will not release their names just for safety reasons.

So far on the case, the prosecution has submitted and you have submitted, what is your overview?

It is nothing out of the ordinary. Essentially what we expected from this hearing. Nothing big. It is everything we expected.

What lessons can Ugandan lawyers learn from this case and you working with the Uganda team?

I will not speak specifically for this case but international law in general. It is finding a way into the organisation is to get an internship or find an LLM that has high recruitment rates or that has a lot of visiting professionals.

In my LLM, we had four people from the ICC that were visiting professionals to help teach for a few days. If you want to get into any type of law, you have to go places where you will meet the right people.

A lot of time it becomes who you are at first then it is who you know. Some way you have to present yourself, how do you move on.

When I first came here (ICC), I first did an internship and you have to set yourself apart or you might end up working for free. I did three jobs on my internship at the ICC court.

But that is a big issue, especially when you are in Uganda, it is to read and learn. Look for internships and programmes on the Internet that would help you.

As a matter of fact, Abigail Bridgeman the Ugandan female that was in court this week. We did attend the same masters degree though different years. She came two years after me. Five of us have the same degree. The ones we did in Italy, it did help us a lot.

At the Beginning of the confirmation hearing of the trial of Dominic Ongwen, it was observed he had no ring on him, however, during the course of the proceedings, especially towards the end, many noted he had a special silver ring on his marriage finger. A question was then paused as to whether Ongwen was married or not.

It is not a wedding ring. Ongwen is a man with two rings but does not wear them around court. One always goes on his ring finger and that he is very much not married.

Ongwen faces 70 charges which include four counts of war crimes and three counts of crimes against humanity.

Amongst them is forced marriage, a charge the presiding judge, Cuno Tarfusser, along with two others will decide if it is within the confines of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The ring in context may give prosecution more reason to believe Ongwen should be tried for sexual-related gender-based crimes inclusive of sexual slavery stipulated in Article 8(2)(e)(vi)-2 (in the Statute) and the confidential charges between 50-60 while the defence continues to insist they be dropped arguing how a low ranking rebel brigade commander like Ongwen has an overwhelming 70 charges yet his ruthless commander-in-chief has only 33 charges at the court.

According to what the assistant to the defence counsel, Michelle Oliel, said during the hearing,"It is the defence submission that there were never any marriages and humbly ask this court not to confirm the charge of forced marriage."

A concerned official from Gulu has expressed fear with Ongwen's boldness to wearing the ring insisting it might compel witnesses to withdraw.

All stakeholders now await the confirmation of charges around April 1 or 4, approximately 60 days from the concluded hearing on the January 27.

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