Defeated Congolese rebel leader captured in Uganda, officials say

General Sultani Makenga, military commander of M23 rebel movement, is said to have surrendered to Ugandan authorities.

A defeated Congolese rebel leader implicated in massacres, rapes and recruiting child soldiers has been captured along with 1,700 of his fighters in Uganda, officials said on Thursday.


General Sultani Makenga, the military commander of the M23 rebel movement, was said to have surrendered to Ugandan authorities after being chased over the border by UN-backed Congolese troops.
The end of the M23's brutal 20-month uprising in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has been hailed as a rare glimmer of hope in a mineral-rich region plagued by seemingly perpetual war, costing millions of lives.

Makenga, 39, and his men were disarmed and being registered by the Ugandan military in Mgahinga, a forested national park near the Congolese border, an unnamed Ugandan military official told Associated Press.

They would remain under Ugandan protection until regional governments, including those of Rwanda and Congo, agree on how to deal with "negative forces" in the region.

A former colonel in the Congolese army, Makenga is responsible for several massacres, sexual violence and the use of child soldiers in eastern Congo, according to research by UN human rights investigators and Human Rights Watch. He is on both UN and US sanctions lists.

Julien Paluku, governor of Congo's North Kivu province, told AP: "Makenga should be arrested and immediately brought before the courts. He should be made to answer for his actions in eastern Congo."

The M23 uprising killed or displaced thousands of people and saw the rebels briefly capture the major city of Goma. But earlier this week the M23 suffered a crushing defeat and lost control of all territory it once held following an offensive by reorganised Congolese troops and a 3,000-strong UN force intervention brigade.
According to UN diplomats at a security council briefing on Wednesday, the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, said: "The wolf at the door, the M23, was threatening civilians, was threatening Monusco [the UN mission]. We hope that the threat of this wolf at the door is now gone for good."

A report by the UN group of experts has said neighbouring Rwanda provided weapons, recruits and training to the M23. It also alleged that some in Uganda's military supported the rebels, but both countries have categorically denied the allegations.

A senior US official said on Wednesday that Washington would consider resuming military aid to Rwanda if it found Rwandan support for M23 had ended.

Rwanda counter-claims that Congo's army tolerates, and even co-operates with, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), whose Hutu members it holds responsible for the 1994 genocide.

The perceived menace of the FDLR has provoked Rwanda to invade Congo twice and triggered a series of Congolese Tutsi rebellions, of which the M23 is the most recent and potentially not the last.

Even before Makenga's whereabouts were known, diplomats emboldened by success had begun turning their attention to other rebels in eastern Congo. "The general consensus was that we have to handle the other armed groups, and among which – I guess on the front line if I may say – the FDLR," Gerard Araud, the French UN ambassador, said after a briefing of the 15-member security council on Congo.

Rwanda's UN ambassador, Eugene Richard Gasana, was quoted by AP as saying the Congolese army and UN peacekeeping troops, including its new intervention brigade, must go after the FDLR immediately. "Otherwise I won't let them sleep," he said.

On Thursday a source close to Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, described his view as: "The UN should have started with the FDLR in the first place. It is the premise under which the UN was there."

Another target is the Islamist group Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). "The ADF in many ways are the most scary of the forces because they are the only ones that have an ideology," a senior council envoy told Reuters.

"The ADF is a Muslim extremist force and there's talk of links to [Somalia's] al-Shabaab."

theguardian