Renegade Congo general held by Rwanda troops

RUMANGABO, Congo — On Sunday, a group of former guerrilla fighters lounged around a hilltop army base, picking avocados. Though their former commander, Gen. Laurent Nkunda, had been captured Thursday by the Rwandan Army, they insisted he was not in captivity but "in negotiations."

"Don't you worry," Lt. Col. Seraphin Mirindi said. "Nkunda will be back."

They could be right.

Nkunda was one of Congo's most powerful and unpredictable rebel leaders, a megalomaniac with proven fighting chops who, until his arrest along the Congo-Rwanda border, had single-handedly destabilized a large chunk of central Africa. But he also was a close friend of Rwanda and a keeper of many secrets.

Congo is now urging Rwanda to extradite him to stand trial for war crimes and treason. Many people here, in the green folds of eastern Congo where so much blood has been spilled, hope his capture could be the final chapter in a conflict that has raged for years.

But there is a growing fear Rwanda may not hand Nkunda over, partly because he knows too much. On Sunday, the military acknowledged for the first time that Nkunda was not jailed but kept at an undisclosed "safe" location in Rwanda.

The dynamic in eastern Congo is volatile, murky and hard to predict. A few weeks ago, top rebel commanders suddenly split off from Nkunda, a charismatic figure who until then had appeared to engender fierce loyalty. Then, thousands of Rwandan troops stormed across the border, as part of a joint Congo-Rwanda mission to flush out Hutu rebels left over from Rwanda's genocide in 1994.

The latest twist came Thursday, when instead of attacking the Hutu rebels, the Rwandans marched straight into Nkunda's territory and bundled him away.

Nkunda is Congolese but is widely seen as an agent for Rwanda's extensive business and security interests in eastern Congo. Like Rwanda's leaders, he is an ethnic Tutsi, and he began his military career as an intelligence officer for the Tutsi-led guerrilla force that now rules Rwanda.

He was there in Kigali when the jet carrying Rwanda's president was mysteriously shot down in 1994, setting off the genocide. He was there in eastern Congo when countless Hutus were massacred in reprisal killings, many of which have never been investigated. He also was there in the early 2000s when, according to United Nations reports, the Rwandan military created a criminal network that exploited Congo's vast mineral resources, including coltan, a vital ingredient in cellphones.

A recent United Nations report accused high-level Rwandan officials of supplying arms and soldiers to Nkunda as recently as a few months ago.

The Rwandan military refuses to say what it will do with Nkunda. Still, Maj. Jill Rutaremara, a spokesman for Rwanda's Defense Forces, said he was not worried about what Nkunda might reveal.

"Whatever we did in the past was open," Rutaremara said.

Political pressure may be building inside Rwanda, especially among Tutsis, not to sell out Nkunda, who is seen by many as a savior for Congolese Tutsis. On Sunday, there were reports of protests in western Rwanda by people upset about the arrest.

Nkunda's former fighters, though, do not seem especially fazed by the abrupt absence of the man they used to call "the chairman." They said they were carrying out his wishes to join the national army.

"Nkunda will always be in our hearts," Mirindi said.

The colonel seemed to make a point of joking with soldiers from the Congolese Army. The two sides, sworn enemies just a few weeks ago, are now eating, sleeping and patrolling together.

"I don't like them," said Dunia Muhima, a government soldier who was standing within earshot of the colonel. "They're Rwandans."