GOVERNMENT REPATRIATES KONY WIVES AND CHILDREN FROM CENTRAL AFRICA REPUBLIC

Two young women and wives to Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony were yesterday received at the UPDF Airbase in Entebbe after being flown in from Bangui, the Central African Republic (CAR).

Ugandan Ikol Grace, 33, and her two children, Ayuma Maria, 8, and Oryema Bosco, 2, and South Sudanese national Aniyessi Teregina, also 33, holding one of Kony’s orphaned children aged 2, were received and escorted from CAR to Uganda by the Chief of Defence Intelligence and Security (CDIS), Major General Richard Otto.

Ikol Grace was abducted aged 10 in 2003 from Amuria District while Aniyessi Teregina was abducted in 2006 aged 13 from Yambio, Western Equatorial state in South Sudan.  She will be facilitated to travel to her home in South Sudan in due course.

In all, 8 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 CAR, Sudan, and South Sudan.

The other women, Congolese and CAR citizens, along with their children, were handed over to their families in the respective countries.

In 2023 and 2024, over 150 LRA returnees, including some of Kony’s wives and children were returned to Uganda from CAR after escaping LRA captivity.