Uganda: apologies but still no trial for ex-LRA Kwoyelo

Appearing from the country’s maximum security prison of Luzira in the capital Kampala, Thomas Kwoyelo had an inquisitive look on his face as his eyes darted across the half empty court room located in Gulu, north of Uganda. Represented in court by a chain of senior lawyers, Thomas Kwoyelo appeared in an oversized business suit, despite having been a Primary Three dropout in 1992 when he was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

In the January 19, mid-morning session, deputy registrar of the High Court Juliet Hatanga read out the litany of charges against him. First and only Lord’s Resistance Army commander on trial by a Ugandan court, he faces no less than 78 charges, including murder, pillage, cruel treatment, violence to life, outrages against the dignity of humanity, torture, rape, enslavement, imprisonment, kidnap with intent to murder, and aggravated robbery.

Before Uganda’s International Crimes Division (ICD), a panel of four judges is hearing the case that has been on and off for a record 15 years since his capture in 2008. The delays, which are hard to understand, are due to “multiple factors” and “the complicated nature of the trial”, according to the Ugandan judiciary.

Raising awareness with apologies

This time at least something happened. After a brief court session in Gulu with no progress on the case, the court officials including Justice Susan Okalany and Justice Richard Wabwire Wejuli travelled some 70 km north for an outreach program to several villages, to meet Lord’s Resistance Army war victims, former abductees, ex-combatants and would-be defence witnesses. The villages included Abera in Pabbo, one in Thomas Kwoyelo’s rural Amuru District and in a district further north.

With scattered, mainly grass-thatched homesteads separated by small gardens of maize, sorghum, millet, bananas, beans, pawpaws, cassava, coffee and cotton, the rural part of this countryside is sparsely populated. There are fewer animals like goats and cows, with the latter used mostly for ploughing. The local population attribute this to the effects of the Lord’s Resistance Army war, when thousands of livestock were raided or driven off in a scorched earth policy.

Arriving on site, Justice Okalany started by apologizing: “I want to apologize on behalf of Uganda, and not only the judiciary, for the delayed trial of Thomas Kwoyelo. This is a very shameful thing for us as a court. I can’t cover it in any way,” he told an attentive crowd as some wiped off sweat from the tropical afternoon heat with their bare hands. Near Pabbo Township, boys were hawking fresh vegetables and fruit near the venue where the seemingly strange delegation of judges and lawyers sat in comfort.

Justice Okalany nevertheless pointed to some of the challenges that have led to the delay of the former Lord’s Resistance Army soldier’s trial. “There are some explanations, like Thomas Kwoyelo challenging the Amnesty Act before the Constitutional Court on why some of his superiors were granted amnesty and his request was not granted. This took some time to be determined. Then there was Covid-19, and challenges of resources can’t be ignored,” Judge Okalany said through an interpreter. “We hope to conclude this matter around mid-year, but I really apologise for the delay; it’s a verdict on our justice system.”

Citing accounts by the prison’s officials, she told the meeting that Thomas Kwoyelo at one time tried to “commit suicide” because of frustrating delays of his case.

“But the good thing is that the case has come to the last leg of its conclusion after the court recently ruled that Thomas Kwoyelo has a case to answer by upholding 78 counts out of the 93 that had been brought against him. So subject to availability of resources, this matter should be closed by mid this year,” added Justice Wabwire, with this last part sounding less reassuring.

Exhumations and burials also delayed

Hatanga, the new registrar, said the trial has also delayed the exhumation and reburial of bodies of war victims, whose relatives wanted to relocate from the internally displaced persons camps scattered in Northern Uganda. The government temporarily shifted thousands of people in 1996 to protect them against rebel attacks. Now the families want proper funerals back in their original homes. But Hatanga said the government could not allow exhumation of the bodies before Thomas Kwoyelo’s trial is completed, as the graves had been labelled “crime scenes”.

Thomas Kwoyelo’s main lawyer, Caleb Alaka, told Justice Info that his team plans to invite over 50 witnesses in his defence. “Our visit here is to update the population on the progress of the case as well as getting witnesses or people with vital information that we can use in defence of Thomas Kwoyelo,” said the seasoned criminal lawyer.

Local residents, speaking in the local Luo language, expressed concern about their safety if they come out as witnesses. “Coming out to testify (in defence) of Thomas Kwoyelo, won’t we be perceived as sympathizers to what the Lord’s Resistance Army did?” asked one of the elderly local residents who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the case.

“Rather we stay away from the case”

“Because of what happened, people do not want to be connected in any way to that war. Many families including mine were destroyed and we live in trauma,” Moses Akena, an uncle to Thomas Kwoyelo and one of the most senior civil servants in Pabbo, told Justice Info. “Some of us were arrested and detained for a long time because of Thomas Kwoyelo. Rather we stay away from the case.” He added that “stereotype and stigma” has taken root in the communities because of the perception of Thomas Kwoyelo’s role in the Lord’s Resistance Army, despite calls by the community leadership for re-integration and harmony between former Lord’s Resistance Army combatants who have renounced the rebellion and the general population.

In Thomas Kwoyelo’s rural district, members of the community connect through village paths to reach out to their friends and relatives in this rather idyllic scenery, where birds sing to the enchantment of those visiting this part of Uganda for the first time and the locals welcome everyone with a wide but curious smile. Perhaps the Thomas Kwoyelo trial seems timeless to them.

“Thomas Kwoyelo was born and grew up here”

Supported by a walking stick, Rosalina Aluma, in her late 90s and looking frail, is helped to sit on a mat in her family compound in Acut Cama Ceri, a remote settlement some 100 km west of the regional northern Ugandan capital Gulu.

The road to Aluma’s homestead in Acut Cama Ceri village changes mid-way from tarmac to a poorly maintained rural murram dusty road and footpath. The grass-thatched homesteads are only connected by footpaths, with no electricity or piped water, and it is an uphill task for visitors to find their way without a guide in this vast grassland punctuated by small woods.

Aluma, a widow and mother of 12, cannot tell her exact date of birth. In this sparsely populated countryside, where the tall, overgrown savanna dominates the landscape, only six of her children are still alive. Among them are the eldest son, Pastor George Abedo, 62, and Thomas Kwoyelo, 50.
Thomas Kwoyelo is the first and only high profile Lord’s Resistance Army soldier to be tried by a Ugandan court for war crimes. Aluma’s son faces 78 charges including murder, pillage, cruel treatment, violence to life, outrages against the dignity of humanity, torture, rape, enslavement, imprisonment, kidnap with intent to murder, and aggravated robbery.

26 years in the bush with the Lord’s Resistance Army

The former commander, who was captured in the Central African Republic jungle in 2008 in a joint operation with American special forces, is Aluma’s fourth child. Her husband Jokon Dino Omona passed away in 2007 shortly after reuniting with Thomas Kwoyelo in the vast Garamba national park in Democratic Republic of Congo. It was there that the Ugandan government and Lord’s Resistance Army were engaged in peace negotiations which collapsed in 2006. At that time, the government took relatives of some of the fighters to Garamba at the rebels’ request, in a bid to defuse tension between the two parties during the stalled peace talks. Thomas Kwoyelo’s father was among them.

Thomas Kwoyelo was born in 1974 in Acut Cama Ceri, the village where his family still lives in the same compound. The young boy was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army at the age of 12, while he was in Primary Three at the nearby school in Pabbo township. “Thomas Kwoyelo was born and grew up here,” said his elder brother, Pastor Abedo, pointing to a site now surrounded by bushes in the homestead, which comprises three mud and wattle grass-thatched huts. With the structure growing old, it crumbled, and Abedo is instead putting up a three-roomed-semi-permanent structure – yet to be completed, but still an indication of how the homestead is being transformed to an iron-roof structure.
“He (Thomas Kwoyelo) was a good boy. He used to play the thumb piano and played solo music,” Abedo told Justice Info in the family compound. “He used to do fishing in the nearby stream and hunt for edible rats, his special delicacy.”

Abducted at the age of 12

At the time of his abduction by the rebels in 1992, Thomas Kwoyelo was on his way home. “When the rebels raided the village, people ran away, but Thomas Kwoyelo was from the garden and had stopped to hunt for birds. It’s where the rebels met him and took him away,” Abedo said. “There were other children that were taken at the time, because the rebels preferred young boys and girls for recruitment.”

“After the rebels left, we began checking on family members, but Thomas Kwoyelo was the only one missing. Later, people told us they saw him among the abducted children being driven away by the rebels.” It was a “sad moment”, he added, and “the family felt helpless because we could not rescue him, and the mother cried uncontrollably for days”.

Aluma, speaking through an interpreter, said that Thomas Kwoyelo’s rise in the rebel ranks turned out to be a nightmare for the family. At least 20 of the family members including Abedo, their uncle Moses Akena and one of the sisters were arrested by the military after Thomas Kwoyelo had become a colonel in the rebel forces. Some of them were detained for four years without charge – and later awarded compensation of 10 million Uganda shillings [almost 2700 USD] by a Ugandan court for illegal detention, she said.

One of Thomas Kwoyelo’s eldest sons, Moses Rackara, 27, who returned from an Lord’s Resistance Army rebel camp in South Sudan seven years ago, decried what he calls state harassment of the family. “One time we were arrested with my sister Fatumah Acam from 11 am to 11 pm when we went to court in Gulu for our father’s appearance, but no reason was given,” he recounted to Justice Info.
Rackara is now a father of six -- three girls and three boys.

Rackara is one of Thomas Kwoyelo’s dozen children from multiple mistresses, according to accounts from his relatives. He lives in the family compound. “My dream was to be a driver, but I could not because of school fees. Now I am into farming,” Rackara added in presence of his other elderly relatives, Donato Lony and Gaudensio Atube, 85 years.

“I am sorry I begat him”

“Because of Thomas Kwoyelo, my family has been left a pauper, we have become a laughing stock,” said Aluma, showing her tattered clothes and pale, weather-beaten feet, which she shifted unconsciously during the interview. “I’m sorry I begat him (Thomas Kwoyelo), maybe if I didn’t give birth to him my family would be better.”

“We were forced to go into exile in South Sudan, and if it were not for my son Abedo, I would still be a refugee there,” she explained. “When I returned from exile in 2010, I found no sign of our home.

Everything was destroyed, and I had to replant even trees that had been cut down during our absence.”
“If other Lord’s Resistance Army combatants have been pardoned, why isn’t government pardoning my son?” she asked, throwing her hands up in despair. “I don’t know what interest government has in my son, not to release him.”

30,000 former Lord’s Resistance Army amnestied

Since the establishment of the Uganda Amnesty Commission in 2000, over 30,000 former combatants who took arms against the government have been granted amnesty. They include 12,000 children abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army during the over two-decade insurgency, in which thousands of civilians from northern Uganda were killed, abducted as child soldiers, sex slaves and porters. The United Nations says the Lord’s Resistance Army has slaughtered more than 100,000 people and abducted 60,000 more since it was set up in 1987.

In May 2021, in The Hague, Netherlands, one of the other Lord’s Resistance Army former commanders, Dominic Ongwen, was convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentenced to 25 years in jail by the International Criminal Court. Ongwen is to date the only high profile Lord’s Resistance Army member to have been convicted.

“At my age, I still dig with my own hands because I have to eat. I always pick some of the harvests, sell them so that I get 2,000 shillings (about USD 0.5) to buy medicine, because all was destroyed. We have no other means of survival,” Aluma complained. She said visiting her son in the prison in Luzira, over 460 km from her home, has been problematic. She did it once, and several times she has been blocked by security, giving her no reason. Justice Info could not independently verify this claim.

“At one time I wished I should have died and the best not to have given birth to Thomas Kwoyelo, who has brought curse to the family. But somehow I sympathize with him as my child, he is in a situation he did not create by himself. If there is any [possibility] to take me to the President, I would ask him what he thinks of putting my son Thomas Kwoyelo in jail for all this time.” As a Christian, she believes “God has the answer” to her predicament.

“I don’t see anything wrong with him. He is a good man. The people they claim he killed, two are alive. One is in Atiak and another in Kitgum,” Rackara said of his father. “I never met Thomas Kwoyelo but there are mixed feelings,” area local chief Charles Akena told Justice Info. “There are those who say he committed crimes, there are others who say he is innocent. In such a situation, it is for the court to decide. As leaders we try to do our part, to encourage the community to live in harmony, despite what happened in the past,” Akena added, as the sun set on the remote settlement.
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