13.03.07 - RWANDA/UGANDA - KAMPALA BRINGS BACK 10 DISSIDENTS TO RWANDAN AUTHORITIES

Arusha, March 13, 2007 – Ugandan authorities on Monday returned ten dissidents of the Movement of the Rwandan people (RPR), a little-known rebel movement, to the Rwandan government, the daily pro-government newspaper, the New Times, reported Tuesday. The ten rebels, including the RPR leader Francois Rukeba and the commander of the military branch, General Jackson Safari, were returned during a ceremony in the Ugandan city of Kabale, in the west of Uganda, the journal indicated. According to the chief of the Ugandan military information, Colonel Leopold Kyonda, these RPR officials recruited combatants in Rwandan refugee camps in Uganda to plan attacks in their country, the New Times reported, which published a photo of Rukeba on the front page. The creation of the RPR was announced by a public communiqué on the Internet on October 19, 2005. According to the text, the movement had the goal of fighting for the “end of the FPR regime” (Rwandan Patriotic Front). The most well-known Rwandan rebel group is the Democratic Forces of the Liberation of Rwanda (FLDR) based in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which includes a number of those suspected of having participated in the genocide of the Tutsis in 1994. One of the heads of the FDLR, the former commander of the Presidential Guard (GP), Major Protais Mpiranya, is sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, in Tanzania. His presence was suspected recently in Uganda when a Kampala newspaper published a copy of his Ugandan passport, which was interpreted as a desertion by Ugandan authorities. Perpetrated by Hutu extremists, the Rwandan genocide caused, according to Kigali, nearly a million deaths, essentially all from among the Tutsi ethnic group. ER/PB/KD © Hirondelle News Agency