The Ugandan army and police have arrested a Roman Catholic cleric they accuse of collaborating with Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, church sources said on Tuesday.
”The army and police surrounded the house of Monsignor Mathew Ojara at Christ the King parish in [the northern town of] Kitgum on Monday night, arrested him and took him to the police station, accusing him of being a rebel collaborator,” said the church source, who declined to be named.
Army spokesperson Major Shaban Bantariza confirmed the arrest, but declined to comment further, advising an AFP journalist to contact the police, ”because they are the ones holding him now”.
The church source said the police confiscated Ojara’s computer, some documents and his cellphone, before he was taken to a police cell in Kitgum.
The LRA has been fighting the Ugandan government forces since 1988 to replace President Yoweri Museveni’s secular regime with one purportedly based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
The war has killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of people, and 1,6-million others have been displaced and forced to live in squalid camps dotting the entire northern region. — Sapa-AFP