Ex-President Kolingba returns from exile

Former Central African Republic President Andre Kolingba returned home on Sunday after two years of exile in Uganda. "I am very happy to return to my country," he told reporters in Bangui on arrival at the city's Bangui-Mpoko Airport. He said he had returned so that he could support the efforts of the current leader, Francois Bozize, and Prime Minister Abel Goumba to "redefine a new Central African Republic". After his failed coup on 28 May 2001, Kolingba fled to Uganda via the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). At that time, thousands of people from his Yakoma ethnic group, including at least 1,000 soldiers, sought asylum in the northern DRC and in the Republic of Congo. In August 2002, the Bangui criminal court sentenced about 800 people, 600 of them in absentia, in connection with Kolingba's coup attempt. Kolingba, his two sons and 18 other people were sentenced to death. In his efforts to reconcile the nation torn by political and military crises, as well as ethnic rivalry, Bozize, who ousted President Ange-Felix Patasse on 15 March, a month later granted an amnesty to all the May 2001 coup convicts. As a result, refugees started returning home en masse. Kolingba ruled the CAR between 1981 and 1993. Apart from the amnesty, Kolingba has had his retired army rank of lieutenant general restored. He was also told he could return home. "I thank President Bozize and Prime Minister Goumba for having fraternally opened the CAR doors to me," Kolingba he said.