KAMPALA (Reuters) – A Ugandan court on Friday sentenced Thomas Kwoyelo, a mid-level commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group, to 40 years in prison for war crimes.
Kwoyelo was found guilty of dozens of war crimes that included murder, rape, enslavement, torture and kidnap in August, the first time a senior member of the group had been tried by Uganda’s judiciary.
Founded in the late 1980s with the aim of overthrowing the government, the LRA brutalised Ugandans under the leadership of Joseph Kony for nearly 20 years as it battled the military from bases in northern Uganda.
The insurgents were notorious for horrific acts of cruelty, including rapes, abductions, hacking off victims’ limbs and lips and using crude instruments to bludgeon people to death.
(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Hereward Holland and Toby Chopra)
