A Ugandan court on Tuesday found a former commander in the feared Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) guilty of multiple counts of crimes against humanity after the first such war crimes trial in the East African country.
Thomas Kwoyelo, who faced 78 counts related to crimes committed during the LRA’s bloody two-decade rebellion, had been waiting for years behind bars for a verdict in the landmark case.
“He is found guilty of the 44 offences and hereby convicted,” lead judge Michael Elubu said at the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the high court in the northern city of Gulu.
They included murder, rape, torture, pillaging, abduction and destruction of settlements for internally displaced people, the judge said.
He said Kwoyelo was found not guilty of three counts of murder, and that “31 alternate offences” were dismissed.
Kwoyelo, who was abducted by the LRA at the age of 12 and became a low-level commander, had previously denied all the charges against him.
The LRA was founded by former altar boy and self-styled prophet Joseph Kony in Uganda in the 1980s with the aim of establishing a regime based on the Ten Commandments.
Its rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni saw more than 100,000 people killed and 60,000 children abducted in a reign of terror that spread from Uganda to Sudan, the DRC and the Central African Republic.
‘Appropriate sentence’
Most of the offences Kwoyelo was convicted of were committed between 1996 and 2005 in his home area of Amuru in northern Uganda and parts of South Sudan.
Deputy public prosecutor William Byansi asked for the court to be given time to find “the most appropriate sentence” for Kwoyelo, who sat in court for the verdict flanked by prison wardens.
“The sentence that should be proportionate to the nature of the offences and culpability among other considerations,” Byansi said.
But one of Kwoyelo’s lawyers, Caleb Alaka, said the court should look into other factors, including his long years in custody.
A low-level commander in the militia, Kwoyelo was arrested in March 2009 in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a sweep by regional forces against LRA rebels who had fled from Uganda two years earlier.
‘He will not receive justice’
He was put on trial in July 2011 before the ICD, but was freed two months later on the orders of the Supreme Court, which said he should be released on the same grounds as thousands of other fighters who were granted amnesty after surrendering.
But the prosecution appealed and Kwoyelo was put on trial again, though the case was repeatedly delayed.
One of Kwoyelo’s sons, Moses Rackara, said Tuesday’s verdict was not a surprise,
“Our father has been mistreated since he went to court and we didn’t expect much other than to convict him because all signs were there that he will not receive justice,” the 27-year-old peasant farmer told AFP.
‘Painfully inadequate accountability’
The civil war effectively ended in 2006 when a peace process was launched, but the LRA’s founder Kony has evaded capture.
He is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for rape, slavery, mutilation, murder and forcibly recruiting child soldiers.
In 2021, Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan child soldier who became a top LRA commander, was sentenced by the ICC to 25 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Accountability for LRA war victims has been painfully inadequate and opportunities for improvement are increasingly slim, making processes in Uganda all the more important,” Human Rights Watch said in a January statement on the Kwoyelo case.
The ICD was set up in 2009 as part of efforts to implement peace agreements signed the previous year between the Ugandan government and the LRA.
It has the authority to try genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, terrorism, human trafficking and piracy.
