A former commander in the feared Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was found guilty of committing multiple counts of crimes against humanity by a Ugandan court on Tuesday.
In the first war crimes trial in the East African country, Thomas Kwoyelo was found guilty of several charges, including murder, rape, torture, pillaging, abduction and destruction of settlements for internally displaced people.
Delivering judgement at the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the High Court in the northern city of Gulu. lead judge Michael Elubu ruled that Kwoyelo was found not guilty of three counts of murder and that “31 alternate offences” were dismissed.
Kwoyelo, who was taken by the LRA at 12 years old and rose to a lower-ranked leadership position, had previously refuted all the accusations against him.
The LRA was established by Joseph Kony, a former altar boy and self-proclaimed prophet, in Uganda during the 1980s with the goal of instituting a government based on the Ten Commandments.
The group’s revolt against President Yoweri Museveni resulted in over 100,000 deaths and the abduction of 60,000 children as part of a widespread campaign of terror that extended from Uganda to Sudan, the DRC, and the Central African Republic.
Kwoyelo carried out the majority of the crimes he was convicted of between 1996 and 2005 in his hometown of Amuru in northern Uganda and in some areas of South Sudan.
The Deputy Public Prosecutor, William Byansi, requested the court to allow time to determine the most suitable sentence for Kwoyelo, who was present in court during the verdict with prison wardens by his side.
Kwoyelo was apprehended in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2009 as part of an operation by regional forces targeting LRA rebels who had escaped from Uganda two years earlier.
In July 2011, he faced trial at the ICD but was released two months later following a Supreme Court directive, which cited the same justification used for granting amnesty to thousands of other combatants who had surrendered.
But the prosecution appealed and Kwoyelo was put on trial again, though the case was repeatedly delayed.
The conflict ended in 2006 through a peace process, however, the leader of the LRA, Kony, has managed to avoid capture. He is being pursued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for offences such as rape, slavery, mutilation, murder, and the forcible enlistment of child soldiers.
In 2021, Dominic Ongwen, a former Ugandan child soldier who rose to prominence as a senior LRA officer, was given a 25-year prison sentence by the ICC for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The International Crimes Division (ICD) was established in 2009 to enforce peace deals inked in the preceding year between the Ugandan government and the LRA.