U.N. reports on Ugandan warlord's crimes against children

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS | Wed Jun 6, 2012 5:33pm EDT

(Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has submitted his first report to the Security Council detailing grave crimes committed against children by Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his feared Lord's Resistance Army, the U.N. announced on Wednesday.

Kony has evaded the region's militaries for nearly three decades, kidnapping tens of thousands of children to fill the ranks of his Lord's Resistance Army and serve as sex slaves as he moves through the bush. Thousands have been killed by his brutal army.

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"The LRA continues to cast a long shadow across Central Africa, causing enormous suffering for children," U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy told reporters.

Kony, a self-styled mystic leader who at one time was bent on ruling Uganda by the Ten Commandments, fled his native northern Uganda in 2005, roaming first the lawless expanses of South Sudan and then the isolated northeastern tip of Congo.

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