CAR: Group of ex-Seleka rebels claims to have captured LRA leader

The Popular Front for the Central African Renaissance (PRGF), a faction of former Seleka rebels, said they have captured and handed over to US forces a leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) also known as “Commander Sam”.

“Our members captured the Commander Sam last weekend in the town of Mbangana in the northeast,” PRGF Commander, Mahamat Déa, said in a telephone interview.

“We wanted the Central African authorities, the United Nations, to be present before we hand him over. But due to a communication problem that our men encountered, we hastily handed him over to US forces” whose detachment is based in Obo, a town in the far east of the Central African Republic, he added.

The arrest is yet to be officially confirmed.

The ex-Seleka group, in January 2015, claimed they arrested Dominic Ongwen, former Ugandan warlord of the LRA, who appeared last January 21 at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.