Uganda has captured one of the top five members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, bringing it a step closer to catching Joseph Kony, the notorious rebel leader accused of war crimes, the military said yesterday.
The Ugandan army said it caught Caesar Achellam, a major general in Kony’s outfit of about 200 fighters, in an ambush along the banks of the river Mbou in Central African Republic on Saturday. Achellam was armed with just an AK47 rifle and eight rounds of ammunition, a spokesman for the Uganda Peoples Defence Force (UPDF) said.
He was being held with his wife, a young daughter and a helper.
The UPDF, which has a force hunting for Kony full-time in the jungle, backed by US troops, said the capture of Achellam would encourage other fighters to abandon the resistance army. “The arrest of Maj Gen Caesar Achellam is big progress because he is a big fish,” said UPDF spokesman Felix Kulaigye. “His capture is definitely going to cause an opinion shift within the LRA.”
Achellam, who was paraded before media, walked with a limp, which he attributed to an old wound. He was returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo when he walked into the soldiers ambush.
The UPDF said it had been on his trail for a month. – (Reuters)