By Kato Jamil
A Ugandan court has sentenced a former commander in 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 pillaging.
He denied all charges that were brought against him.
Kwoyelo is the first commander from the feared rebel group to be convicted by a Ugandan court.
Founded in the late 1980s, the LRA is accused of carrying out atrocities in Uganda and neighbouring countries.
Kwoyelo’s trial was held in the city of Gulu in northern Uganda – the region that was terrorized by the LRA for more than two decades.
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.
The International Crimes Division of the Ugandan High Court decided not to give Kwoyelo the death sentence or life imprisonment because he was abducted by LRA fighters as a child and turned into a soldier.
The group was known to abduct children and turn them into child soldiers or sex slaves.
Kwoyelo says he was 12 years old when he was abducted.
The court also said Kwoyelo had expressed remorse and was deemed to no longer pose a threat to society.
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. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced from their homes by the conflict.
The LRA operated mostly in northern Uganda at first, then shifted to the Democratic Republic of Congo where Mr Kwoyelo was arrested in 2009, and later the Central African Republic.
The group has largely been wiped out. An international effort to capture Kony failed and was later suspended after he was deemed to no longer pose a danger to Uganda.
Kwoyelo originally had 78 charges brought against him – he was acquitted of three murder charges and 31 other charges were dismissed.
The former commander will serve a total of 25 years in jail as he has already spent 15 years on remand.
His lawyers said they intend to appeal against each conviction and the court has given them 14 days to do so.
The court will hear the case on reparations for Kwoyelo’s victims separately.
The International Criminal Court in the Netherlands sentenced another LRA commander, Dominic Ongwen, to 25 years in prison, in 2021.
As in Kwoyelo’s case, Ongwen was spared a life sentence on the consideration that he was taken as a child and groomed by rebels who had killed his parents.
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