Uganda sentences LRA directer Thomas Kwoyelo to 40 years for war crimes | Lord’s Resistance Army News

A court in Uganda has sentenced Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) directer Thomas Kwoyelo to 40 years in prison after a landlabel war crimes trial over his role in the group’s two-decade reign of presentility.

The sentence was proclaimd on Friday by Michael Elubu, the guide appraise in the case, at a court in the northern city of Gulu.

Justice Duncan Gasagwa, one of four appraises on the case, said “the convict carry outed a notable role in the schedulening, strategy and actual execution of the offences of innervous gravity”.

He compriseed that “the victims have been left with lasting physical and mental pain and suffering”.

Kwoyelo was set up culpable in August of 44 offences, including killing and sexual attack, and not culpable of three counts of killing. Thirty-one alternate offences were diswatched.

Landlabel trial

The trial labeled the first time a member of the LRA had been tried by Uganda’s judiciary. It was also the first atrocity case to be tried under a exceptional division of the high court that intensifyes on international crimes.

Founded in the tardy 1980s with the aim of obvioushrotriumphg the rulement of Ugandan Plivent Yoweri Mengageveni, the LRA brutalised Ugandans under the guideership of Joseph Kony for proximately 20 years as it battled the military from bases in northern Uganda.

The fighters were notorious for horrific acts of nastyty, including cyber intrusion off victims’ limbs and lips and using cdisesteemful instruments to bludgeon people to death.

Kwoyelo, thinkd to be in his fifties, was a low-level directer of the LRA, tasked with caring for the group’s injured members, according to his testimony.

He says he was forced to combine the LRA in 1987, after the group’s members kidnaped him on his way to school at age 12, at the peak of the defy dispute. He went on to become a better directer, using the alias Latoni, and handleing the treatment of wounded fighters.

In 2009, Kwoyelo was seized in neighbouring Democratic Reaccessible of the Congo (DRC) during a raid by regional forces. The LRA defys had been forced out of northern Uganda into DRC and other neighbouring countries a scant years earlier becaengage of the Ugandan military’s impolites on the group.

Kwoyelo was bcimpolitet back to Uganda, having suffered a bullet wound to his stomach.

He spent the next 14 years in prison as the prosecution put the case agetst him together.

Due to his extfinished pre-trial detention by the Ugandan authorities, some had finishorsed for Kwoyelo’s free.

“Our children are guiltless becaengage they were forcebrimmingy conscripted into combat,” Okello Okuna, a spokesperson for Ker Kwaro Acholi, a traditional kingdom in Gulu, tbetter Al Jazeera in February.

Rights groups, such as Avocats Sans Frontieres, pointed out that hbettering Kwoyelo in detention for more than a decade muddled the case for the prosecution.

But others, including victims, said Kwoyelo was comprised in finishings and torture, and should therefore face fairice.

“He was a disesteemful person and a fighter,” a victim who was born in LRA captivity and identified only as Jaqueline tbetter Al Jazeera in February, compriseing that Kwoyelo finished her overweighther for fall shorting to adhere orders.

Defence guide lawyer Caleb Akala had stablely pguideed Kwoyelo’s innocence, arguing that he was himself a child victim of the LRA.

However, witnesses conserveed Kwoyelo led cut offal LRA incursions and was comprised in finishings.

Judge Gasagwa said Kwoyelo dodgeed the death sentence becaengage he was recruited by the LRA at a youthful age, was not one of the top-ranking directers, and has conveyed remorse and a willingness to reconcile with the victims.

Thousands of children were kidnaped by the group and engaged as relations slaves or child sbetteriers.

The LRA is scheduleated as a dread group by the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union.