Washington // A man claiming to be one of the top commanders of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army has surrendered to US forces in the Central African Republic.
The LRA – led by violent warlord Joseph Kony – has killed more than 100,000 people and kidnapped more than 60,000 children in an almost three-decade reign of terror in central Africa, according to the United Nations.
On Tuesday, state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said a man saying he was senior LRA leader Dominic Ongwen had defected. The man is now in the custody of US forces deployed in the hunt for Kony in CAR.
“If the individual proves to be Ongwen, his defection would represent a historic blow to the LRA’s command structure,” Ms Psaki said.
“Efforts to establish full and positive identification continue, so I don’t have confirmation of that at this point.”
In 2013 the United States offered up to US$5 million (Dh18.4m) for the capture of Kony, who is also wanted by the International Criminal Court along with Ongwen and two other lieutenants.
There is also a $5 million bounty offered for information leading to the arrest, transfer and conviction of Ongwen, who is accused by the state department of “murder, enslavement and cruel treatment of civilians.”
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Ongwen in 2005 on charges of three counts of crimes against humanity and four of war crimes.
According to LRAcrisistracker.com, set up by two non-governmental organisations to map atrocities by the LRA, Ongwen was himself a child-soldier abducted as a 10-year-old while on his way to school.
He rose rapidly through the organisation’s ranks, becoming a major at 18 and a brigadier by his late 20s.
But he has reportedly had a volatile relationship with Kony.
“The apprehension of the LRA Commander Dominic Ongwen would be a major opportunity to advance justice for the LRA’s long record of atrocities,” said Ida Sawyer, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“He should be promptly surrendered to face justice.”
The LRA first emerged in northern Uganda in 1986, where it claimed to fight in the name of the Acholi ethnic group against the regime of president Yoweri Museveni.
But over the years it has moved across the region’s porous borders.
From Uganda the LRA travelled to southern Sudan before shifting to northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Finally, in 2008, the group crossed into southeastern CAR.
Combining religious mysticism with an astute guerrilla mind and bloodthirsty ruthlessness, the LRA’s leader Kony has turned scores of young girls into his personal sex-slaves while claiming to be fighting to impose the Bible’s Ten Commandments.
In March, Washington sent extra commandos and tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft to Uganda to help African Union forces hunt Kony down.
He has remained on the run for more than a decade, although State Department officials have said they believe the number of his supporters has dwindled in recent years.
* Agence France-Presse
