LRA commander awaits war crimes verdict

Kwoyelo, who is charged over brutal murders, is first and only high profile LRA soldier to be tried for war crimes

A Ugandan court is due Tuesday to deliver its verdict in the landmark trial of Thomas Kwoyelo, a former commander of the feared Lord's Resistance Army militia accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Kwoyelo, who is charged over brutal murders committed during a 20-year conflict in northern Uganda, is the first and only high profile LRA soldier to be tried for war crimes by a court in the East African country.

He faces a total of 78 counts including murder, rape, enslavement, torture, pillaging, cruel treatment, kidnap and outrages against human dignity in the case heard by the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the high court in the northern city of Gulu.

Kwoyelo, who is 49 years old according to one of his lawyers, was abducted at the age of 12 and has denied all charges against him.

The LRA was founded by former altar boy Joseph Kony in Uganda in the 1980s with the aim of establishing a regime based on the Ten Commandments.

The bloody 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 Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for rape, slavery, mutilation, murder and forcibly recruiting child soldiers.

Kwoyelo was arrested in March 2009 in the neighbouring DRC during a sweep by regional forces against LRA rebels who had fled from Uganda two years earlier.

He was put on trial in July 2011 before the ICD, but was released two months later on the orders of the Supreme Court which said he should be released on the same grounds as other fighters who were granted amnesty after surrendering.

The prosecution appealed the decision and he went on trial again in April this year.

"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 2024 statement on the case.

According to court documents, "all attacks by the LRA which took place in Kilak County, Amuru District between 1987 and 2005, the subject of charges in this indictment, were either commanded by him or were carried out with his full knowledge and authority".

His lawyer Caleb Alaka told AFP in May that Kwoyelo "has been consistent that he is innocent and looking forward to the court ruling".

After the LRA was driven out of Uganda, it spread across the forests of the DRC, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Sudan.

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.

The civil war effectively ended in 2006 when a peace process was launched, but the LRA's founder Kony has evaded capture.