Thomas Kwoyelo’s defence team on Wednesday started presenting its witnesses to testify in defence of their client.

This comes after Kwoyelo informed the court on April 30, 2024, that he is done with his defence testimonies.

On April 24, 2024, the International Crimes Division of the High Court adjourned the hearing of the testimonies and fixed May 2, 2024, as the date for resumption. However, over the weekend the court’s registrar issued a notice recalling the hearing to Tuesday, April 30, 2024.

In a rare occurrence, the court proceeded with the case yesterday much as it was a public holiday—Labour Day.

Kwoyelo, the former commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, has since last month been appearing before the court sitting in Gulu district to respond to 78 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, torture, and sexual crime, among other counts. 

His defence lawyers Evans Ochieng, Boris Anyuru and Caleb Alaka on Tuesday disclosed to the court that they had prepared two expert witnesses to testify in favour of their client.

On Wednesday, one of the expert witnesses Ambrose Olaa, the former Prime Minister of the Acholi cultural institution ‘Ker Kwaro Acholi’ testified before the court.

With guidance from one of the defence lawyers, Evans Ovhieng, Olaa took the oath and embarked on his testimony which were centred on the Acholi cultural perspective.

He explained to the court the formation and structures of the Acholi community, governance structure, cultural beliefs, practices, norms, justice systems, and conflict resolution mechanisms.

According to Olaa, the Acholi community believes in supernatural beings, which he called ‘Jok jok ma malo’, which he says have powers over the dead, the living, the unborn, and everything in society. 

He listed to the court how Acholi societies are structurally formed, beginning with the family, homesteads, sub-clan, clan, and chiefdom.

He told the court that according to Acholi tradition, no one dares to kill fellow humans, and whenever such an offence occurred, the relatives would sit down to investigate the root cause of the death.

If found that the person was murdered recklessly, they would conduct some rituals to allow the spirit of the deceased to go for revenge against the people who may have been involved in the killing.

According to Olaa, the murderer (perpetrators) is never at peace after committing the offence until the rightful procedure of restorative justice involving acceptance, truth-telling, compensation, and reconciliation is done between the two conflicting parties to enable perpetrators to regain their normalcy. 

He is scheduled to continue his testimony today Thursday.

The defence explained that they are bringing in expert witnesses to contextualise how some of the counts against Kwoyelo can best be dealt with through the traditional justice system.