Lord’s Resistance Army rebel convicted of war crimes in Uganda

A child-turned-rebel commander in the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a landmark trial in Uganda.

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

He denied all 78 charges against him.

Of the remaining 34 cases, Kwoyelo was acquitted of three counts of murder and the other 31 were acquitted.

Kwoyelo becomes the first commander of the LRA to be tried by a Ugandan court, bringing a heavy rain to the justice system in the country.

The trial was held in the town of Gulu in northern Uganda – a region that has been under attack by the LRA for more than two decades.

Dressed in a black suit and red tie, the former LRA commander showed no emotion in answering a long list of incriminating decisions.

The judge read out the names of the people killed on Kwoyelo’s order.

Another infamous incident is the 2004 attack on a camp for internally displaced people in Pagak, northern Uganda. Scores of women and children were beaten to death with sticks.

Kwoyelo has spent 14 years in prison, which analysts say is partly due to the size and complexity of the case.

Joseph Kony founded the LRA in Uganda more than two decades ago, and said he was fighting to establish a government based on the 10 principles of the Bible.

The group was notorious for mutilating people and kidnapping children to be used as soldiers and sex slaves. Hundreds of thousands of people were driven from their homes by the conflict.

The LRA began operating in northern Uganda and then moved to the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where Kwoyelo was arrested in 2009, and later to the Central African Republic (CAR).

The team is pretty much done. But Mr Kony, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, has never been arrested.

Human Rights Watch has previously criticized the delay in Kwoyelo’s trial, and says there is generally little accountability for crimes committed during the 25-year conflict, including torture by Ugandan government forces.

In 2021, Senior LRA commander Dominic Ongwen was sentenced to 25 years by the ICCwho decided not to give him life in prison because he was kidnapped when he was young and trained by the rebels who killed his parents.

Kwoyelo says he was also kidnapped by the LRA when he was 12 years old going to school.

Thousands of former LRA members have been granted amnesty under Uganda’s controversial law, after leaving and abandoning the rebel group.

But this option was not given to Kwoyelo, who is yet to be sentenced.