In a startling turn against its former ally, Rwanda has arrested Congo rebel leader Laurent Nkunda after he fled a joint operation launched by the armies of the two nations, a military spokesman for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) said yesterday.
Rwandan and Congolese troops converged on Thursday on Nkunda’s stronghold in the DR Congo town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border, said Captain Olivier Hamuli, a spokesman for the joint force. But Nkunda resisted arrest and fled farther south, crossing the border into Rwanda where he was taken into custody, he said.
Rwandan officials could not immediately be reached for comment and the reason for Nkunda’s arrest was not immediately clear. But analysts said Rwanda and Nkunda’s own commanders had grown irritated by Nkunda, viewing him as a flippant, authoritarian megalomaniac who allegedly embezzled money from rebel coffers.
Around 4,000 Rwandan soldiers entered DR Congo this week at the invitation of the Congolese government, a startling reversal of alliances between the two longtime enemies. Both nations have said the Rwandans are in DR Congo as part of an operation to hunt down and disarm thousands of mostly Hutu ethnic fighters who fled to DR Congo in the wake of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
Nkunda was the rebel leader behind months of fighting late last year with the army in eastern Congo. The fighting displaced more than 250,000 people as Nkunda’s forces advanced toward the provincial capital, Goma.
Nkunda took up arms several years ago with backing from formerly close ally Rwanda, claiming he needed to protect minority Tutsis from the Hutu militias.
Earlier this month, Nkunda suffered a major blow when his ex-chief of staff, Bosco Ntaganda, formed a splinter movement. And in a dramatic reversal last week, Ntaganda announced his forces would work together with DR Congo’s army to fight the Hutu militias and eventually integrate into the army.
Ntaganda may have turned on his former boss because he was afraid months of growing distrust might have prompted Nkunda to turn him over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, where he is wanted for the alleged forced conscription of child soldiers in the northern Ituri region five years ago.
Although details of the agreement to allow Rwandan troops on Congo soil have not been made public, analysts speculate the government may have promised not to hand Ntaganda over for extradition in exchange for his cooperation.
Rwanda has been under international pressure for months to use its influence over Tutsi rebels to end the conflict and the breakthrough agreement may have been borne out of the split within Nkunda’s movement that both DR Congo and Rwanda were quick to exploit.
Nkunda has spent much of the last decade-and-a-half embroiled in war in the region. As a young Congolese in exile in Uganda, he fought with Tutsi-led Rwandan forces that stopped Rwanda’s genocide 15 years ago, ousting that country’s Hutu government.
He went on to become a senior commander within a Rwandan-organized Congolese rebel group which held a huge swath of the east during a 1998 to 2002 war.
After a peace deal ended that fighting, he joined DR Congo’s army but quit in 2004 to launch his rebellion.
Since then, Nkunda has commanded thousands of fighters in the rural hills of eastern Congo, running his own fiefdom, collecting taxes and launching military operations against the army and Hutu militias.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS