A Ugandan court on Friday sentenced former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander Thomas Kwoyelo to 40 years in prison after a landmark war crimes trial over his role in the group’s two-decade reign of terror.

It was the first time a member of the feared organisation — which waged a two-decade rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni — had been tried for war crimes in a Ugandan court.

The sentence against Kwoyelo, who was convicted in August on 44 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, was announced by Michael Elubu, the lead judge in the case at the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the high court in the northern city of Gulu.

He said Kwoyelo had the right to appeal the sentence and/or conviction within 14 days.

The charges against him included murder, rape, torture, pillaging, abduction and destruction of settlements for internally displaced people.

Kwoyelo, who was abducted by the LRA at the age of 12 and became a low-level commander, had previously denied all the charges against him.

The LRA was founded by former altar boy and self-styled prophet Joseph Kony in Uganda in the 1980s with the aim of establishing a regime based on the Ten Commandments.

Its rebellion saw more than 100,000 people killed and 60,000 children abducted in a reign of terror that spread from Uganda to Sudan, the DRC and the Central African Republic. (AFP: Text, Excluding Headline)

•Thomas Kwoyelo says he was forced to join the LRA in 1987, after the group’s members abducted him on his way to school at age 12 [File: Gael Grilhot/AFP]