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Ex-members of the former Sierra Leone Army (ex-SLA) were still holding two Revolutionary United Front (RUF) commanders, Mike Lamin and Denis Mingo, on Tuesday, ECOMOG spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Olukolade told IRIN.
The two men had gone to the Occra Hills, about 50 km east of the capital, for an RUF military congress, according to humanitarian sources in Freetown. UNOMSIL officers and some members of the ECOWAS Peace Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) who had accompanied them were detained briefly and released, the sources said.
Olukolade said the two were held because of a division between the RUF and the ex-SLA -- soldiers loyal to the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) that overthrew President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in May 1997. The two groups became allies when the AFRC invited the RUF to join it in Freetown following the 1997 coup. After ECOMOG troops drove the AFRC out of Freetown in February 1998, the RUF/ex-SLA took to the bush, where they
remained until July's peace pact.
However, tension has been high between the two allies because of claims by ex-SLA that they were left out of the peace agreement.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions