The Hague 6 Dec (ANA)  - The first former child soldier to appear at the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges has told judges he was a victim too. Lords Resistance Army (LRA) commander Dominic Ongwen said the LRA was responsible and he had also suffered from the atrocities. Ongwen was a boy when he was abducted by the notoriously ruthless rebel cult. He is now in his early 40s. He faces 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Uganda. Mr Ongwen is accused of leading attacks on four camps for internally displaced people in northern Uganda, murdering and torturing civilians, and forcing women into marriage and children to take part in the fighting. But he told the court the charges should be brought against the LRA and its leader Joseph Kony, not him. "It is the LRA who abducted people in northern Uganda, killed people in northern Uganda and committed atrocities in northern Uganda. I'm one of the people against whom the LRA committed atrocities. It is not me who is the LRA," he said. The BBC's Anna Holligan in The Hague says Mr Ongwen's story encapsulates many of the complexities of the LRA conflict, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives, because he was a child groomed in the image of his oppressors.(ANA)

FA/ANA/6 December 2016-----