Taban fighters return from DRC

Dec 15, 2003

SOME 56 fighters of Taban Amin who were based in the DR Congo returned home yesterday.

By Emmy Allio

SOME 56 fighters of Taban Amin who were based in the DR Congo returned home yesterday.

A plane for the United Nations Observer Mission in Congo (MONUC) which brought the Ugandans from Kitona military base in western Congo arrived at Entebbe International airport at 1:30am. Most of combatants were old, frail and tired-looking.

On the same plane were 14 wives and 10 children of the combatants. MONUC officials said this was the first batch of about 400 Ugandan rebel fighters and their families to be flown this week.

Army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza received the returnees at Entebbe. Also present was Taban Amin and officials of the Internal Security Organisation, the agency, which has coordinated the return.

Taban fighters comprise largely the remnants of the decimated West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) rebels defeated in 1997. Prominent among the returnees was a senior WNBF officer and formerly an officer of the defunct Uganda Army, Col. Isaac Yeka and Major Juma Iga who was a battalion commander in the WNBF.

“We are happy that Taban Amin is able to mobilise these people to come home. The Government wants all Ugandans to come home instead of living fruitless exile life,” Bantariza said.

He said, “There is no reason for anybody to live out of the country or be left out. Ugandans still out there must quickly return home. Uganda is for all of us.”

Taban Amin, who returned home last October, recently toured several parts of the country. In Gulu, he said he was willing to go to LRA leader Joseph Kony’s military camp at Baraak State lodge in Juba, southern Sudan, to talk to him over peace.

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