In the historic trial of Thomas Kwoyelo, a former militia commander accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a Ugandan court is scheduled to render its decision on Tuesday.
Kwoyelo is the first and only well-known LRA soldier to be tried for war crimes by a court in East Africa. He is accused of carrying out savage killings during a 20-year struggle in northern Uganda.
In the case heard by the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the high court in the northern city of Gulu, he is accused of 78 counts in all, including murder, rape, enslavement, torture, pillaging, cruel treatment, kidnapping, and outrages against human dignity.
Kwoyelo, who is 49 years old according to one of his lawyers, was abducted at the age of 12 and has denied all charges against him.
The LRA was founded by former altar boy Joseph Kony in Uganda in the 1980s with the aim of establishing a regime based on the Ten Commandments.
The bloody rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni saw more than 100,000 people killed and 60,000 children abducted in a reign of terror that spread from Uganda to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for rape, slavery, mutilation, murder and forcibly recruiting child soldiers.
Kwoyelo was arrested in March 2009 in the neighbouring DRC during a sweep by regional forces against LRA rebels who had fled from Uganda two years earlier.
He was put on trial in July 2011 before the ICD, but was released two months later on the orders of the Supreme Court which said he should be released on the same grounds as other fighters who were granted amnesty after surrendering.
The prosecution appealed the decision and he went on trial again in April this year.
“Accountability for LRA war victims has been painfully inadequate and opportunities for improvement are increasingly slim, making processes in Uganda all the more important,” Human Rights Watch said in a January 2024 statement on the case.
According to court records, “all attacks by the LRA which took place in Kilak County, Amuru District between 1987 and 2005, the subject of charges in this indictment, were either commanded by him or were carried out with his full knowledge and authority” .
In May, Kwoyelo’s attorney Caleb Alaka told AFP that Kwoyelo “has been consistent that he is innocent and looking forward to the court ruling”.
The LRA extended over the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Sudan after it was driven out of Uganda.
Dominic Ongwen, a prominent LRA commander and former child soldier from Uganda, was given a 25-year prison sentence by the International Criminal Court in 2021 for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
When a peace process was started in 2006, the civil war was essentially over, but Kony, the leader of the LRA, managed to escape capture.
