Tourists killed in Uganda: captured ADF leader also accused of school massacre

An ADF militia commander arrested on Tuesday for the murder of two foreign tourists in Uganda has also been charged with a school massacre in June, a Ugandan general said on Friday.

On Thursday, the army announced the capture of Abdul Rashid Kyoto, also known as Njovu, and the death of six other members of the commando group accused of murdering a British and a South African honeymooner and their guide in Queen Elizabeth Park on October 17.

The ADF rebels, affiliated to the jihadist group Islamic State, have previously been accused by the Ugandan authorities of attacking a school in the western town of Mpondwe on June 17, in which 42 people were killed, and another on October 28 in Kasindi, in eastern DRC, in which four people were killed, including two Ugandan soldiers.

"There is a correlation between the three attacks and Njovu's command", General Dick Olum, in charge of an anti-ADF operation in the DRC, told AFP: "It was the same Njovu, alias Abdul Rashid Kyoto, who commanded these attacks and the attack on the two tourists and their guide".

"We have a lot of information on the ADF. We know who led these missions to kill people", he added.

His capture "should reassure Ugandans and tourists that with the operations underway, Uganda is safe and the ADF will be defeated", he concluded.

The murder of the two tourists in one of Uganda's most famous parks raised fears in the tourism sector, which contributed almost 10% of the country's GDP last year, according to official figures.

Originally Ugandan rebels with a Muslim majority, the ADF spread to eastern DRC in the 1990s. They pledged allegiance in 2019 to the EI, which claims responsibility for some of their actions and presents them as its "Central African Province" (Iscap in English).

They are accused of having massacred thousands of civilians in the DRC in recent years and of carrying out jihadist attacks on Ugandan soil.

On Thursday, a Ugandan court sentenced seven people to between seven and ten years' imprisonment, notably for their links with the ADF.

The convicts, including a 75-year-old man, had pleaded guilty to belonging to a "terrorist organization", as well as to financing terrorism and trafficking children for recruitment into the ADF.

One of them also pleaded guilty to recruiting his children into the ADF and rape.