A Ugandan court on Tuesday found Thomas Kwoyelo, a commander in the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), guilty of multiple war crimes, marking the first time a senior member of the group has been tried by Uganda’s judiciary.
The LRA, founded in the late 1980s with the aim of overthrowing the government, terrorized Ugandans under Joseph Kony’s leadership for nearly 20 years, conducting military operations from bases in northern Uganda. The group was infamous for its extreme brutality, including rapes, abductions, mutilations, and killings using crude weapons.
Around 2005, under military pressure, the LRA fled to South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic, where it continued to perpetrate brutal attacks against civilians.
Kwoyelo, who denied the more than 70 charges against him, including murder, rape, enslavement, torture, and kidnapping, appeared to disagree with the verdict as it was read out in a courtroom in Gulu, northern Uganda, on Tuesday. He sat with his arms crossed, shaking his head.
“The verdict of this court is that the accused was found guilty,” said Justice Michael Elubu, one of the four high court judges.
Kwoyelo was captured by the Ugandan military in 2009 in the jungles of northeastern Congo and has been in pre-trial detention ever since. His case has moved slowly through the Ugandan court system. The court found him guilty on 44 charges, dismissed 31 as duplications, and acquitted him on three.
Next week, the judges will begin pre-sentencing hearings before setting a date for Kwoyelo’s sentencing.
LRA leader Joseph Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague but remains at large despite several attempts to capture him. In 2021, the ICC convicted another senior LRA commander, Dominic Ongwen, of war crimes, including rape, sexual enslavement, child abduction, torture, and murder, sentencing him to 25 years in prison.
