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Gedeon Kyungu

KINSHASA. — A wanted warlord in south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has surrendered, five years after he escaped from prison where he was awaiting execution for crimes against humanity, the provincial governor said yesterday.Gedeon Kyungu, leader of regional separatist group, Bakata Katanga, turned himself in with about 100 of his fighters at a ceremony in the village of Malambwe on Tuesday, Haut Katanga governor Jean Claude Kazembe said.

It was not immediately clear why Kyungu had surrendered, what would happen to him now or whether the staged nature of his return suggested some sort of deal had been agreed.

Authorities have struggled for decades to end violence in the east, where militia groups have attacked civilians and plundered vast mineral resources.

Kazembe said he thought Kyungu wanted to take part in the government’s rebel demobilisation programme, a scheme that rights activists have criticised for integrating violent insurgent groups into the national army.

The region where Kyungu operated before his arrest became known as “the triangle of death” because of the suffering inflicted on civilians there.

News of the ceremony organised to mark his surrender angered some campaigners.

“The welcome that was reserved for Gedeon was a great disappointment and an insult to all of his victims . . . Gedeon’s place is in prison,” the president of the African Association for Human Rights, Jean Claude Katende, told Reuters.

A Congolese military court sentenced Kyungu to death in 2009 for his role in widespread killings in the copper-rich Katanga region.

But he escaped from prison in the provincial capital of Lubumbashi in 2011.

UN experts said in a 2014 report that he had close ties to high-ranking politicians. — Reuters.