A Ugandan court has handed down a 40-year prison sentence to Thomas Kwoyelo, a former commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), following a significant war crimes trial.
This trial addressed his involvement in the LRA’s two-decade period of violence and terror.
This marks the first occasion that an individual from the notorious organization, which carried out a two-decade insurgency against President Yoweri Museveni, has faced war crimes charges in a Ugandan court.
The sentencing of Kwoyelo, who was found guilty in August on 44 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, was delivered by Michael Elubu, the presiding judge at the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the high court located in the northern city of Gulu.
He said Kwoyelo had the right to appeal the sentence and/or conviction within 14 days.
The charges against him included murder, rape, torture, pillaging, abduction and destruction of settlements for internally displaced people.
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 Ten Commandments.
Its rebellion saw more than 100,000 people killed and 60,000 children abducted in a reign of terror that spread from Uganda to Sudan, the DRC and the Central African Republic.
AFP
