Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has arrested his deputy on suspicion of spying but denies executing him, a top peace mediator told Reuters on Friday.
Norbert Mao, a top regional politician, said he had just spoken to the fugitive head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) by satellite phone at an undisclosed location in the remote forests of north-east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Ugandan media, quoting unnamed government intelligence sources, says Kony killed his second-in-command Vincent Otti about a month ago following a dispute over money and control.
”He told me Otti is not dead,” Mao said after talking to Kony. ”He is only under house arrest because of a disagreement.”
Both LRA leaders are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes committed during their 20-year insurgency, which has uprooted two million people in northern Uganda alone and destabilised parts of Sudan and the DRC.
A truce was signed at peace talks that began last year in Southern Sudan, but Kony, Otti and other senior guerrillas have stayed hidden in the DRC in fear of arrest.
‘Paranoia’
Mao, a key player at the negotiations in Juba, said Kony told him he believed his deputy was a Ugandan government spy.
He said he had urged the rebel boss to remain calm.
”Movements like the LRA operate on paranoia,” Mao said. ”I told Kony he needs to deal with this internal disagreement without too much recklessness.”
Otti, who was seen as the brains behind the LRA and instrumental in its decision to join talks, often spoke to mediators and reporters by satellite phone from his hideouts.
But he fell silent in recent weeks and his various numbers went unanswered, prompting fierce speculation about his fate.
Kony’s first reported comments on Otti’s whereabouts come as the LRA representatives at the Juba negotiations — mostly members of Uganda’s Diaspora — toured the north of the country following a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala.
The rebel delegates are meeting local leaders and visiting camps for villagers displaced by the war, where they are trying to win support for their bid to scrap the ICC arrest warrants.
Mao said the rift between Kony and Otti was a concern, but that it would not derail the talks.
”Kony understands that to take Otti out of the equation will not help,” he said. – Reuters