International court upholds convictions of Ugandan rebel

• The ICC Appeals Chamber rejected 90 grounds of appeal raised by Ongwen's lawyers, who alleged violations to his right to a fair trial and other human rights and challenged ICC's findings on his individual criminal responsibility, the ICC said in a press release.

Details: The five-judge appeals panel upheld his sentence, while presiding judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza partially dissented on one aspect of the last ground of appeal.

• Ibáñez Carranza said she would have asked trial judges to reconsider Ongwen's decades-long sentence, in part because she believed that the lower court miscounted the number of his victims and that Ongwen was a victim himself since he was abducted by the LRA when he was 9-years-old and forced to become a child soldier.
• Thursday's ruling is final, the court said. "A phase dedicated to the reparations to victims is ongoing," the ICC added.

Flashback: The LRA was formed in the late 1980s by Joseph Kony, an ICC fugitive who became notorious in 2012 when a U.S.-based advocacy group made a viral video detailing the group's gruesome crimes.

• A Ugandan military campaign drove the LRA out of the country. Various reports have claimed that Kony was hiding in Sudan or the Central African Republic (CAR), where the rebel group continued to carry out sporadic attacks on civilians, per AP. Ongwen was arrested in the CAR in 2015.