20091221

GENEVA (Reuters) - Leaders of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army must be brought to justice for carrying attacks of deliberate brutality in neighbouring Sudan and Congo, the top U.N. human rights official said on Monday.

Launching two reports on investigations into a series of assaults on civilians, including babies, in the past year in the African neighbours, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said it was critical that LRA leaders be tried in international court for what may be crimes against humanity.

"The brutality employed during the attacks was consistent, deliberate and egregious," she said.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague in 2005 issued war crimes warrants for LRA Commander-In-Chief Joseph Kony and other senior LRA commanders, but they remain in hiding.

Both reports, produced by Pillay's office, called for cooperation with the ICC, including from governments in the region, in the arrest and surrender the LRA leaders accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

"The attacks have left a legacy of trauma, both individual and collective, and those affected continue to live in fear of their lives," Pillay said, stressing that security forces in Congo were ill-equipped to protect civilians from roving bands of Ugandan fighters.

Rapes, killings, lootings and other abuses led to mass displacement in southern Sudan and eroded confidence in the police and army in the oil-producing region that was still recovering from more than two decades of civil war, said Pillay, a former U.N. war crimes judge from South Africa.

In the U.N. report on Congo, a producer of gold, coffee, sugar and palm oil, investigators detailed synchronised LRA attacks, mutilations and rapes that killed at least 1,200 people between September 2008 and June 2009.