A Ugandan court has sentenced a former commander of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to 40 years in prison after a landmark war crimes trial.
Thomas Kwoyelo was found guilty of 44 charges, including murder, rape, kidnapping and plunder.
He denies all charges against him.
Koyelo is the first commander of the feared rebel group to be convicted by a Ugandan court.
The Lord’s Resistance Army was formed in the late 1980s and has been accused of committing atrocities in Uganda and neighboring countries.
Kowoyelo’s trial was held in the northern Ugandan city of Gulu, a region that has been terrorized by the Lord’s Resistance Army for more than two decades.
A notorious incident was the 2004 attack on a camp for displaced civilians in Pagak, northern Uganda.
The International Crimes Chamber of Uganda’s High Court decided not to sentence Koyelo to death or life imprisonment because he was kidnapped as a child by Lord’s Resistance Army militants and turned into a soldier.
The group is known for kidnapping children and turning them into child soldiers or sex slaves.
Kwoyelo said he was 12 years old when he was abducted.
The court also said Coiello had expressed remorse and was considered no longer a danger to society.
Joseph Kony formed the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda more than two decades ago and claims to be fighting for a government based on the Ten Commandments of the Bible.
The group is notorious for chopping off people’s limbs. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes because of the conflict.
The Lord’s Resistance Army initially operated mainly in northern Uganda before moving to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Mr. Kwoyelo was arrested in 2009, and later to the Central African Republic.
The group has been largely wiped out. International efforts to capture Kony failed and were later suspended after it was deemed he no longer posed a threat to Uganda.
Kwoyelo was initially charged with 78 counts, of which he was acquitted of three murder charges and 31 others were dismissed.
The former commander will serve a total of 25 years in prison, as he has already spent 15 years in custody.
His lawyers said they planned to appeal each conviction and the court gave them 14 days.
The court will hear a separate case regarding compensation for Kwoyelo’s victims.
Netherlands International Criminal Court Another LRA commander, Dominic Ongwen, sentenced to 25 years in prison2021.
As in Kwoyelo’s case, Ongwen was spared a life sentence because he was taken away and groomed as a child by the rebels who killed his parents.
