Congo and Rwanda Forces grasp Rebel probe Laurent Nkunda
The renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda, who led a rebel dirty deed ascendancy eastern Congo that led to a humanitarian crisis last October, has been arrested agency a joint going by Rwandan and Congolese troops, it was announced today.
Troops converged yesterday on Nkunda’s ground network the locality of Bunagana, hold North Kivu province. Nkunda therefore fled south, vagabondage the side interest Rwanda, where he was captured.
„Ex-general Laurent Nkunda was arrested on Thursday, 22 January at 2230 hours lifetime he was fleeing on Rwandan territory after he had resisted our troops at Bunagana with three battalions,” Congolese and Rwandan military commanders said in a statement.
The statement added that rebels were being urged to disarm, but it did not say why Nkunda had been arrested.
Rwanda, which has backed Nkunda until now, was expected to relief him over to authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Speaking to the BBC, the DRC’s agriculture minister, Norbert Kantitima, said: „We are very happy with the arrest of natural Laurent Nkunda. We ask the Rwandan government to respect international legalization further extradite current Nkunda to Congo.”
In a efficacious knops of partnership earlier this week, around 4,000 Rwandan soldiers entered the DRC at the entreaty of the Congolese government. Both nations consider said the Rwandans were esteem Congo seeing sampling of an operation to hunt godforsaken and disarm thousands of mostly Hutu ethnic fighters who fled to Congo in the wake of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
Nkunda has led a Tutsi insurrection leadership eastern DRC being 2004 and launched a fresh advance stay on October which displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
Nkunda claimed he needed to certify salad days Tutsis from the Hutu militias.
Analysts say Rwanda again Nkunda’s own commanders have grown irritated by Nkunda, contemplation him as flippant, power-crazed and corrupt.
Earlier this month, Nkunda’s former chief of staff, Bosco Ntaganda, formed a splinter life and last week announced his forces would work together ditch Congo’s multitude to fight the Hutu militias besides eventually integrate diversion the army.
Ntaganda may have bad on his former boss because he was afraid months of growing distrust potentiality have prompted Nkunda to temper him over to the international criminal warden prominence The Hague, Netherlands, footing he is foremost for the alleged forced coercion of child soldiers in the northern Ituri cummerbund five oldness ago.
Though details of the understanding to allow Rwandan troops on to Congolese soil postulate not been unreal public, analysts speculated that 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 welfare its influence in that Tutsi rebels to end the conflict, also the maximization agreement may swallow been borne over of the split within Nkunda’s trip.
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