Government has repatriated two women said to be wives of Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony, together with children, from the Central African Republic.
According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs, the group was received at the UPDF Airbase in Entebbe after being flown in from Bangui.
Those received include Ugandan national Ikol Grace, 33, and her two children, Ayuma Maria, 8, and Oryema Bosco, 2. Also returned was South Sudanese national Aniyessi Teregina, 33, who was holding one of Kony’s orphaned children, aged 2.
The group was escorted from the Central African Republic to Uganda by the Chief of Defence Intelligence and Security, Major General Richard Otto.
The UPDF says Ikol Grace was abducted in 2003 from Amuria District when she was 10 years old, while Aniyessi Teregina was abducted in 2006 from Yambio, Western Equatoria State in South Sudan, when she was 13.
According to the statement, Teregina will be facilitated to travel to her home in South Sudan in due course.
The army says a total of eight Kony wives and 13 children escaped from captivity in January this year after their camp was attacked by an armed group south of Darfur, near the border of the Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan.
The other women, who are Congolese and Central African Republic citizens, were handed over to their families in their respective countries.
The UPDF further noted that in 2023 and 2024, more than 150 LRA returnees, including some of Kony’s wives and children, were returned to Uganda from the Central African Republic after escaping captivity.
The statement was signed by Col. Chris Magezi, the Acting Director Defence Public Information at the Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs.
