Uganda: LRA commander Thomas Kwoyelo found guilty in landmark war crimes trial

 

Thomas Kwoyelo was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity on Tuesday in the first trial by a Uganda court of a member of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group.

A court in Uganda has 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,” said the lead judge, Michael Elubu, at the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the high court in the northern city of Gulu.

The offences include 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, child soldier turned low-level commander

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 10 commandments.