Former LRA rebel sentenced to 40 years in prison in landmark case in Uganda

A Ugandan court has sentenced a former commander of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to 40 years in prison following a landmark war crimes trial.

Thomas Kwoyelo was found guilty of 44 charges including murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery.

He denied all the allegations against him.

Kwoyelo is the first commander of the feared rebel group to be convicted by a Ugandan court.

Founded in the late 1980s, the LRA is accused of committing atrocities in Uganda and neighboring countries.

Kwoyelo’s trial took place in the northern Ugandan town of Gulu, a region terrorized by the LRA for more than two decades.

One high-profile incident was an attack on a camp for displaced civilians in Pagak in northern Uganda in 2004. Dozens of women and children were beaten to death with wooden batons.

The International Crimes Division of the Supreme Court of Uganda decided not to sentence Kwoyelo to death or life imprisonment because he was abducted as a child by LRA militants and turned into a soldier.

The group is known to have kidnapped children and turned them into child soldiers or sex slaves.

Kwoyelo claims he was 12 years old at the time of his kidnapping.

The court also found that Kwoyelo had expressed remorse and was found to no longer pose a danger to society.

Joseph Kony formed the LRA in Uganda more than two decades ago and claimed to be fighting to establish a government based on the 10 commandments of the Bible.

The group was famous for cutting off people’s limbs. The conflict forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

The LRA initially operated mainly in northern Uganda, then moved to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Kwoyelo was arrested in 2009, and later to the Central African Republic.

The group was largely destroyed. An international attempt to capture Kony failed and was later suspended when it was determined he no longer posed a threat to Uganda.

Kwoyelo was originally charged with 78 charges – he was acquitted of three counts of murder and had 31 other charges dismissed.

The former commander will spend a total of 25 years in prison, having already spent 15 years in custody.

His lawyers announced that they intended to appeal against any conviction, and the court gave them 14 days to do so.

The court will consider the case regarding compensation for Kwoyelo’s victims separately.

International Criminal Court in the Netherlands sentenced another LRA commander, Dominic Ongwen, to 25 years in prisonin 2021.

As with Kwoyelo, Ongwen was spared a life sentence on the condition that he was taken in as a child and raised by the rebels who killed his parents.