In a historic case in Uganda, a former child soldier who joined the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) and became a rebel commander was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Thomas Kwoyelo was found guilty on 44 counts, including murder, kidnapping, and pillaging.
Kwoyelo was found not guilty of three murder charges out of the 34 remaining accusations, while 31 other charges were dropped.
Kwoyelo is the first LRA commander to face a Ugandan court, marking a landmark milestone in the country’s judicial system.
The trial was held in Gulu, a city in northern Uganda that has been terrorised by the LRA for more than two decades.
In response to the huge list of guilty judgments, the former LRA commander, dressed in a dark suit and crimson tie, remained composed.
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).
Kwoyelo stated that he, too, was captured by LRA combatants while walking to school when he was 12 years old.
Thousands of former LRA members have been given amnesty under a contentious Ugandan law for leaving and rejecting the rebel groupbut this choice was not offered to Kwoyelo.
