Dominic Ongwen: The ICC’s poster and problem child

Last week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) heard the closing arguments in the trial of Ugandan Dominic Ongwen, five years after his first appearance. In no other ICC trial have case narratives been so opposite, morally complex and riddled with paradoxes, say historian Thijs Bouwknegt and criminologist Barbora Hola, who describe how the Ongwen saga seems “both the ICC’s success story and antithesis of what it stands for and fights against”.