GULU, Uganda (Reuters) — It is not often that families of murder victims petition the courts to forgive their killers. But in Uganda, almost an entire tribe whose relatives were slaughtered and children kidnapped by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels are lobbying for them not to be tried before an international tribunal.Fugitive LRA leader Joseph Kony and three deputies are wanted by The Hague-based International Criminal Court on charges including mass killing, mutilation and using child soldiers. But in northern Uganda, few want them jailed.

“They should forgive Kony,” said Walter Akena, a 28-year-old resident of one of Uganda’s refugee settlements, as grubby children with swollen bellies and torn T-shirts gathered round. “We want to end this mayhem. Forgiveness starts a new life, bringing people together,” he says, adding that he feels no anger towards the rebels who killed two of his brothers.

Last Saturday, the government and LRA signed phase three of a five-stage deal at talks in south Sudan aiming to end a 20-year war that killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 1.7 million, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The LRA routinely hacked off the lips and ears of victims, butchered thousands and kidnapped children to use as fighters, porters and sex slaves. In November 2005, it killed Bermudian missionary Colin Lee.

Nearly the entire population of northern Uganda — almost all the Acholi tribe — was forced to take refuge in squalid camps where many complained of abuse at the hands of Ugandan soldiers. Analysts say only an agreement that allows the LRA to avoid jail and save face will coax them out of their forest hideouts and end the nightmare of war.

The phase three document handles accountability for war crimes, but is vague on penalties. “Uganda has institutions under national laws capable of addressing human rights violations,” it says, implying a rejection of the world court.

For the LRA, that means the government, which requested the ICC indictments in 2005, must get them scrapped. “The challenge is for the government to go to the ICC and show we don’t need them,” LRA deputy commander Vincent Otti, an indictee, told Reuters by phone from his Congolese hideout.

But analysts say only the ICC’s pre-trial judges can remove the indictments and cannot do so on political grounds. “The ICC indictments can’t be wished away,” says Phil Clark, a research fellow at the Ulster University’s Transitional Justice Institute. “All parties need to operate on this understanding <\m> anything else is delusional.”

The government says it will set up a tribunal for rebel crimes, with possible amnesties, but has infuriated the LRA by saying the Ugandan army, which has also been accused of abuses, will not face these processes. “Justice that is one-sided won’t stick,” says Ron Atkinson, an expert on northern Uganda at South Carolina University. “The government does not ... have a serious intention ... for both sides to face justice.”

Both sides agree there are softer alternatives to jail. Leaders of Kony’s Acholi tribe suggest reconciliation rituals during which a murderer faces relatives of the victim and admits his crime. In “Mato Oput”, both drink a bitter brew made from a tree root mixed with sheep’s blood. Compensation is sometimes paid. US-based Human Rights Watch says such rituals are unacceptable, because credible justice must dish out punishments to fit crimes. Proponents disagree. “Justice is in the mind,” says Norbert Mao, lawyer and chairman of Gulu district, at the heart of the conflict. “Once people believe something has been done which puts the abomination behind them, it allows reconciliation.”

Mao thinks those insisting on retribution have missed the point. “The purpose is to prevent revenge. It is arrogant to dismiss traditional justice as an excuse for impunity.”

Officials admit any sentences for LRA found guilty of crimes would have to be reduced from those in national law, which include death. Amnesties would be offered, which would not please ICC judges.

Foreign Affairs Minister Oryem Okello says amnesties for grave crimes were used in Northern Ireland, South Africa and neighbouring Rwanda, where traditional “gacaca” courts have levelled lesser punishments for the country’s 1994 genocide. Traditional justice, say the Acholi, will be enough. “We slaughter goats, we eat together, we are reconciled,” says Morris Okello, 28, whose parents were killed by rebels.