Wanted LRA Leader Joseph Kony
The United States on Wednesday posted a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Lord’s Resistance Army chief Joseph Kony, and a similar bounty for three other rebel leaders.
Kony has been on the run in the jungles of Central Africa, but the LRA has waged a fierce insurgency across four countries for two decades. It is notorious for mutilating victims and abducting children for use as sex slaves and soldiers.
Kony’s name was added to the State Department’s war crimes rewards program along with fellow LRA members Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen, and Sylvestre Mudacumura from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
The bounties are being offered by the State Department under a provision in the War Crimes Rewards Program authored by Secretary of State John Kerry when he was a senator and signed into law by President Barack Obama in January. That provision expanded the scope of the program that had previously allowed for rewards to be offered for war crimes suspects wanted only by international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Kony is accused of ordering widespread atrocities during a brutal campaign for power that originated in Uganda in the 1980s and is wanted by the International Criminal Court. He is now believed to be hiding in the Central African Republic where an international manhunt for him led by African troops has been suspended due to lack of cooperation from that country’s new leaders, who overthrew the government last month.
This bounty will increase pressure on the LRA Leader who is already on the run and shows how the Obama administration is serious with apprehending the warlord. In 2011, the US offered 100 special forces to help in tracking down the elusive Joseph Kony.
Additional Reporting By Agencies
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