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🇺🇬 Uganda’s court orders government to pay LRA war crime victims

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.

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