Ex-commander of a Ugandan rebel group has been sentenced to 40 years in prison

A former commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels was sentenced to 40 years in prison by a court in Uganda on Friday for brutal crimes committed by the group during the insurgency that began in the 1980s.

Thomas Kwoyelo – a former child soldier who later became a rebel commander – will serve only 25 years in prison as he has already spent 15 years in custody, the court ruled.

Kwoyelo’s prison sentence applies to the most serious crimes he faced, including multiple murders, rape, plunder and slavery. The verdict was handed down by a Supreme Court panel sitting in Gulu, the northern city where the LRA once operated. Kwoyelo can appeal.

Grace Apio, a Ugandan victim of the LRA uprising, told The Associated Press she thought the sentence was lenient.

The punishment “is very little for us, the victims,” she said. “We feel very bad… This sentence will encourage other people who want to start a war, that in Uganda, after committing these atrocities, you get a light sentence and then come back to society and start your life again. ”

Kwojelo was convicted in August on 44 of the 78 charges he faced for crimes committed during the uprising between 1992 and 2005.

Kwoyelo, whose trial began in 2019, had been in custody since 2009 as Ugandan authorities tried to figure out how to deliver justice in a way that was fair and credible. Human Rights Watch described his trial as “a rare opportunity for justice for the victims of the two-decade war between” Ugandan forces and the LRA.

Prosecutors said Kwoyelo held the military rank of colonel within the LRA and that he ordered violent attacks on civilians, many of whom had been displaced by the uprising.

The LRA’s overall leader, Joseph Kony, is believed to be hiding in a vast area of ​​unmanaged jungle in Central Africa. The US has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Kony’s arrest. who is also wanted by the International Criminal Court.

One of Kony’s lieutenants, Dominic Ongwen, was sentenced by the ICC in 2021 to 25 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Thousands of other rebel fighters have been granted amnesty by the Ugandan government over the years, but Kwoyelo, who was captured in neighboring Congo, was denied this reprieve. Ugandan officials have never explained why.

Kwoyelo, who denied the charges against him, testified that only Kony could be held accountable for LRA crimes, saying everyone in the LRA risked death for disobeying the warlord.

The LRA, which started in Uganda as an uprising against the government – ​​and later expanded its activities into neighboring Congo and the Central African Republic – was accused of recruiting boys to fight and keeping girls as sex slaves. At the height of its power, the group was a notoriously brutal outfit whose members evaded Ugandan forces in northern Uganda for years.

The LRA was accused of committing several massacres mainly involving members of the Acholi ethnic group. Kony, himself an Acholi, is a self-proclaimed messiah who said early in his rebellion that he wanted to rule Uganda according to the Biblical Ten Commandments.

When military pressure drove the LRA out of Uganda in 2005, the rebels spread across parts of Central Africa. The group has faded in recent years and reports of LRA attacks are rare.