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An Ugandan Court found former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel commander Thomas Kwoyelo guilty of 44 counts of war crimes and crimes against Humanity.
Arrested more than 15 years ago in Garamba Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he is the first LRA leader to have been tried by a national court.
The International Crimes Division (ICD), sitting in the northern town of Gulu, will announce the sentence for Thomas Kwoyelo “no later than next Tuesday”, added Judge Michael Elubu.
With a worried look on his face, Thomas Kwoyelo listened as Judge Michael Elubu spelled out the 78 charges before delivering the court’s verdict.
Facing 78 charges (including murder, slavery, looting, abduction, rape, torture…), Thomas Kwoyelo was “convicted of 44 offences and sentenced”, but cleared of three other charges and 31 others were dismissed, Judge Elubu detailed. Most of the crimes with which he is charged were committed between 1996 and 2005 in northern Uganda, particularly in his native Amuru district.
The man, now in his fifties, rejected these accusations outright, claiming that he had never killed anyone, that his role was to care for wounded fighters, and that he was a child soldier, having been abducted at the age of 12 and forcibly recruited into the LRA.