Uganda's court orders government to pay LRA war crime victims

KAMPALA - A Ugandan court has ordered the government to pay up to 10 million Ugandan shillings ($2,740) to each victim of Lord's Resistance Army commander Thomas Kwoyelo, the first senior member of the rebel group to be convicted by Uganda's judiciary.

In October, Kwoyelo, a mid-level commander in the LRA, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for war crimes including murder, rape, enslavement, torture and kidnapping.

According to the court ruling, Kwoyelo was found unable to pay any compensation to the victims due to his "indigent" status, leading the court to order the government to bear the cost.

The scale of Kwoyelo's atrocities, according to the ruling, was such that they amounted to "a manifestation of failure on the part of the government that triggers a responsibility on the state to pay reparations to the victims," the ruling said.

The court also awarded additional cash compensation of varying amounts to the victims of other harm caused by Kwoyelo, including property destruction and theft.

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' acts included rapes, abductions, the hacking off of victims' limbs and lips and use of crude instruments to bludgeon people to death.

In around 2005, under military pressure, the LRA fled to the lawless jungles of South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic, where it also committed violence against civilians.

Splintered elements of the group and Kony are believed to still live in those areas, although attacks are now infrequent.

The Ugandan military captured Kwoyelo in 2009 in northeastern Congo and his case crept through the Ugandan court system until his conviction in August.

($1 = 3,645.0000 Ugandan shillings)

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Felix Bate and Ros Russell)