Joseph Kony (centre) and his deputy Vincent Otti (right) during a meeting in 2005. PHOTO | FILE
Joseph Kony, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) warlord retreated into his lair inside the ravines of Garamba forest after the noose tightened around his neck in September 2007. This was two years after the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the LRA leaders, including Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Raska Lukwiya and Dominic Ongwen. They were indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. A month later Kony’s deputy Vincent Otti, a ruthless commander, who orchestrated the 1996 Atiak massacre at his birthplace where 300 civilians were slaughtered, was dead.
Isolated and paranoid, Kony had earlier on feared that the talks between the Uganda government and LRA at Rikwangba were a bait dangled by the Ugandan government and the international community to draw him closer to the South Sudan border from his hideout and have him encircled by an elite US commando unit. The reclusive rebel leader gradually ceded powers to his deputy Otti.
As the din of war subsided, Otti gleefully took on his new role as the face of the peace-talks. He regaled government officials and a battery of journalists who had gathered at Rikwangba, a forested outpost, with its clean air peppered with fresh fragrance from the canopy of trees—with tales of guerill war lore.
He often provided updates about the progress of the protracted talks, spoke to journalists in Uganda, and specifically called local radios in the Acholi Sub-region on his satellite phone to criticise those who “were bent on sabotaging the talks” as he gradually eclipsed his boss. The United Nations (UN) had already put some thought into the venue of the talks, clearing the bush to erect a tent camp as a shelter for senior officials, including the chief negotiator, the South Sudan vice president, Riek Machar, and his coterie of bodyguards.
In the night, journalists and government negotiators lit bonfires to escape the biting cold in the quiet night often disrupted by the howls of hyenas lurking in the shadows of the forest. Kony spent much of his time inside the bowels of Garamba, a sanctuary for leopards, crocodiles, and venomous snakes, but he kept a close eye on Otti.
Mistrust
Through his hatchet man, Bok Abudema, a visibly burly commander with blood-shot eyes, Kony remotely watched Otti’s every step. Deep-seated mistrust amongst negotiators over power and money and orders from ‘armchair commanders’ based in London who advised Kony to continue fighting engulfed the LRA.
A warlord with an impulsive rage, who had turned his backyard in Acholi into a ghoulish landscape and spread his terror across South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and later, the Central African Republic, Kony did not tolerate any dissent.
Two former bodyguards within the elite Control Alter Brigade, which protected Kony and his family, recently told Saturday Monitor in an interview where they requested anonymity that the suspicion was triggered by a deal, which commenced a year before Otti was killed. The deal involved, one of the bodyguards told us, “mercenaries and then Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir who promised to give weapons to Kony in exchange for an ivory tusks’ haul from Garamba.”
One of the bodyguards, who eavesdropped on Kony’s conversations on the satellite phone, claims that his boss was initially interested in the ivory tusks-arms swap deal but “eventually declined on grounds that his spirits disapproved the deal because too much blood would be shed in Uganda during the fighting.”
Reconsidered
“Both the mercenaries and Sudan wanted to back the LRA with enough weapons and mercenaries so that we could hit Uganda in three days and overthrow it. They also told Kony that the deal would be in exchange for ivory tusks. They also asked him to prepare a first batch of 100 pieces of elephant tusks,” the bodyguard disclosed.
Testimony. “Otti and his group were arrested upon entering the camp and were detained at Kony’s residence, where they were held for two days before being killed,” Thomas Kwoyelo
He added: “He summoned his brother Olanya to consult over the plan and Olanya okayed it but the following day he told the mercenaries that he changed his mind.’’
The bodyguard alleges that Omar el-Bashir “personally came to our camp and met Kony. The two, our source adds, spoke Arabic, and Kony knew bits of Arabic. He offered Kony a fighter jet, which he said would hit Kampala, Entebbe, Gulu, Masindi, and Bombo. Kony rejected the plot, saying people would die and that his spirits had advised against accepting the deal, he recalled. “Because Kony was not interested in the deal, they turned to Kony’s deputy Otti, who had signaled a willingness to the plan, and Otti accepted the deal.’
Otti in crosshairs
Another former captive and Kony’s bodyguard said reports had leaked to Kony the week before another round of peace talks in Rikwangba indicating that Otti alongside his acolytes, was plotting to carry out a palace coup against Kony.
“They [mercenaries] had convinced Otti to engage the other commanders loyal to him so that they would form a force for the mission that would see them kill Kony before returning to Uganda.” Otti reportedly briefed some of his trusted lieutenants about the plot, but one of them ‘betrayed Otti and tipped Kony about it.’
According to the source, the plot was meant to lure Kony into a dragnet as he walked to the Rikwangba venue for talks, where he would be shot in an ambush staged by Otti and other Putschists.
“Before he could reach the ambush, he learnt about it and never told anybody; he only delegated Bok Abudema and gave him a group of soldiers to represent him in the talks, saying he would return home.”
Walking into death trap
“Upon return, out of anger, he then summoned his commanders and told them to go to Rikwangba and arrest Otti and bring him over to him, but his brother Olanya advised him against the plan since Otti would resist and a fight would ensue at the talks, ” the source said.
Olanya advised Kony to summon Otti for a High Command meeting. Otti naively walked into this death trap. The bodyguard says Kony was apoplectic with rage. “Some of the soldiers who were known to be very loyal to Otti had also been arrested before Otti himself even turned up, with the intent to kill Otti, a few of us guards were already aware, while the rest did not know what was going on,” he said.
The bodyguard, who returned from captivity in 2019 and now lives in Patongo Sub-county, Agago District, says he was on duty as a bodyguard at Kony’s residence on the fateful morning when Otti was killed.
“The first bullet that killed Otti was fired by Kony and he returned to confirm moments later that a PK machine gun that he ordered to be fired at Otti to crash him, had accomplished the mission. Otto Agweng, Kony’s guard, came and shattered his lifeless body using a PK machine gun, Kony also returned to check if indeed Otti was dead, ” the source said.
Agweng was later executed in 2013 by Kony for defying the orders of his boss when he raped an abducted girl.
Barely after Otti was killed, his brigade was dissolved for fears that his close aides could avenge his death.
He dissolved the brigade and re-assigned the soldiers to random units and commanders. Among the other commanders arrested and who were supposed to be killed alongside Otti, according to the ex-bodyguard were Thomas Kwoyelo, Otim commander, and Adjumani Ayimaga, among others. He, however, spared their lives after he received spiritual guidance.
Kwoyelo corroboration
The two accounts match the testimony of Thomas Kwoyelo during his trial before the International Crimes Division of the High Court sitting in Gulu, in April 2024. Kwoyelo is facing 78 charges, including murder, pillage, cruel treatment, violence to life, outrages against the dignity of humanity, torture, rape, enslavement, imprisonment, kidnap with intent to murder, and aggravated robbery.
“The soldiers were ordered to go and seize Otti’s unit, disarm all the soldiers inside, and arrest Otti, Otim Records, and Ben Achellam [Brigade commander] on sight while they return from the peace talks. I was in Kony’s camp at the time Otti and the group left the peace talks, at the same time my arrest was ordered by Kony,” our source went on to reveal.
Kwoyelo told the court that Otti and his group were arrested upon entering the camp and were detained at Kony’s residence, where they were held for two days before being killed.
“On the fateful morning, about 9am while in my house, I heard machine gun fire from a distance. Otti and his colleagues had been shot in a firing squad,” he revealed. “Once he took me to his residence, Kony then told me that multiple intelligence reports had been brought to him about me, Ben Achellam, Otti Vincent, Otim Records, Ayimaga, and other officers, that we were finalising a plot to defect to the government, and that Otti was the leader of the plot.”
According to our source, Kony narrated how spirits guided him to spare Kwoyelo’s life.
“The night you were arrested, the holy spirit came and reported to me that you are innocent and that if I went ahead to kill you, I would face the same fate and get killed the same way,” Kony reportedly told Kwoyelo.
Kwoyelo recollected that the Sudanese spirit and guardian of the sick referred to as Mama Celini, told Kony that he was being framed and that another Congolese spirit, the director of intelligence spirits called ‘who are you’, had come to him at about 7am and warned Kony about the catastrophe that would befall the LRA if he was killed.
Peace talks
Kony returned to Rikwangba after Otti was killed. Mr Yusuf Adek, the Rwot (chief) of the Pageya clan in Acholi Sub-region and the former advisor to Kony, said during the talks, there was suspicion and rancour after it was rumoured that Otti was dead.
“Kony did not want to disclose that he had killed Otti claiming that he had been isolated with a contagious illness suspected to be Cholera. I was called on a satellite phone, I thought it was Otti because that number was always for Otti, but Kony appeared on it talking to me, this made me suspicious as to why he was using Otti’s phone,” Mr Adek revealed.
“Kony then told me that Otti, who was ailing with cholera, was getting better. I became curious when I saw a tracksuit that we bought from Nairobi for Otti, it was with Abudema Bok, one of the commanders, whom I saw wearing it…then [it] came to my mind that there was something wrong. During the talks right from the first detachment, the soldiers’ mood was sombre; they did not welcome us warmly as before,” he said.
Later during the talks, Mr Adek confronted Kony about the rumour that Otti was dead.
“We later learnt that Otti had plotted, with seven other commanders, to kill Kony, and they arrested six; it was only Opio Makasi who escaped and evaded arrest,” he said.
Eye-witnesses feared dead
In November 2023, the Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) terminated proceedings against the alleged former vice chairman and second-in-command of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Vincent Otti. The chamber reached the decision following the prosecution’s “third request to terminate proceedings against Vincent Otti” in which it explained that “all available evidence indicates that Otti was killed in a remote area of DRC in October 2007.”
In a statement, the ICC said the prosecution appended two witness statements and explained that the only-eye witness to Otti’s killing must also be assumed dead and indicated that further investigative steps are unlikely to result in any additional proof of Otti’s death.
In its decision, the Chamber found that the only reasonable conclusion is that Mr Otti is no longer alive and that the ICC could not exercise jurisdiction over a deceased person.
“The death of the suspect is therefore required to terminate the proceedings against Otti, further to which all relevant documents, including any warrants of arrest, are rendered without effect,” the statement said.
Otti, faced 11 counts of crimes against humanity (murder, sexual enslavement, inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering) and 21 counts of war crimes (rape, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, forced enlistment of children, cruel treatment of civilians, pillaging, and murder) allegedly committed in northern Uganda after July 1, 2002.
