A child soldier-turned-rebel commander in the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a landmark case in Uganda.
Thomas Kwoyelo was found guilty on 44 counts including murder, kidnap and pillaging.
He denied all 78 charges that were brought against him.
Of the remaining 34 charges, Kwoyelo was acquitted of three murder charges and 31 other charges were dismissed.
Kwoyelo becomes the first LRA commander to be tried by a Ugandan court, marking a watershed moment for the country’s judicial system.
The trial was held in Gulu city in northern Uganda – the region that was terrorised by the LRA for more than two decades.
In a dark suit and red tie, the former LRA commander showed no emotion in response to the long list of guilty verdicts.
A judge read out the names of civilians who were killed on Kwoyelo’s orders.
One notorious incident was an attack on a camp for displaced civilians at Pagak in northern Uganda in 2004. Dozens of women and children were beaten to death with wooden clubs.
Kwoyelo has spent the last 14 years in detention, which analysts partly attribute to the scale and complexity of the case.
Joseph Kony formed the LRA in Uganda more than two decades ago, and claimed to be fighting to install a government based on the Bible’s 10 Commandments.
The group was notorious for chopping off people’s limbs and abducting children to use as soldiers and sex slaves. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced from their homes by the conflict.
The LRA first operated in northern Uganda then shifted to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where Kwoyelo was arrested in 2009, and later the Central African Republic (CAR).
The group has largely been wiped out. But Mr Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, has never been apprehended.
Rights group Human Rights Watch has previously criticised the delays in Kwoyelo’s case, and says in general there has been limited accountability for crimes committed during the 25-year conflict, including abuses by Ugandan state forces.
In 2021, senior LRA commander Dominic Ongwen was jailed for 25 years by the ICC, which decided not to give him a maximum life sentence because he had been abducted as a child and groomed by rebels who had killed his parents.
Kwoyelo says he too was abducted by LRA fighters at the age of 12 while walking to school.
Thousands of former LRA members have been granted amnesty under a controversial Ugandan law, after leaving and renouncing the rebel group.
But this option was not given to Kwoyelo, who is yet to be sentenced.
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