Victims of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) expressed disappointment on Friday, October 25, 2024, over the sentencing of former LRA commander Thomas Kwoyelo, who received a 40-year prison term for war crimes that included murder, rape, enslavement, pillaging, torture, and kidnapping. Kwoyelo will serve only 25 additional years, having already spent 15 years in detention.
Grace Apio, a survivor, criticized the sentence as too lenient for the severe atrocities inflicted by LRA rebels. “We feel very bad, our properties that were destroyed, the children we produced in captivity. We’re really suffering,” she stated.
Apio also warned that the ruling could embolden future insurgents. “You can commit these atrocities and end up with a light sentence and then you come back to society and start your life again,” she said.
Kwoyelo avoided a death sentence due to his own abduction by the LRA as a child and his expressed remorse. Founded in the late 1980s, the LRA sought to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a state based on Joseph Kony’s interpretation of the Ten Commandments. The group became notorious for extreme violence, including mutilating victims and forcibly recruiting children as soldiers and sex slaves.
Kwoyelo, however, denies responsibility for the charges. In his defense, he testified that only Kony could answer for LRA actions and that members faced death for disobeying the warlord. His lawyer, Evans Ochieng, announced plans to appeal both the conviction and the sentence. “After consultation with the client, he has instructed us to appeal, and we are formally going to appeal,” he said, adding that “we shall be arguing in the court of appeal.”
Human Rights Watch described the trial as “a rare opportunity for justice” for the victims of the LRA’s decades-long insurgency against the Ugandan government. Forced out of Uganda in 2005 by military pressure, the LRA has largely faded, and attacks have become rare, though Kony remains at large since his 2005 indictment by the International Criminal Court.
(AP)
