Ex-army officers arrested upon return now released

Forty former officers of the Central African Republic army, who were arrested on Saturday upon their return from exile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), were released the following day, Dominique Said Panguindji, state prosecutor of the Tribunal of First Instance in the capital, Bangui, told IRIN on Monday. "All of them were released after we had checked their identity," Panguindji said. Radio Ndeke Luka, sponsored by the UN and Fondation Hirondelle, reported on Monday that the former army men were mostly from the Yakoma ethnic group of former president Andre Kolingba, and had been living in Gbadolite, northern DRC, since June 2001. They fled the country after a coup attempt by Kolingba on 28 May 2001. In August 2002, 800 people were sentenced, 20 of them to death, in absentia by the country's criminal court in relation with the coup attempt. In April, Francois Bozize, who took power in a coup on 15 March, granted amnesty to all the 28 May plotters. Meanwhile, Bozize, who on Friday and Saturday toured Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo (RoC), has urged all CAR nationals in exile in the RoC to go back home. "It is time for all of you to return home," he said in a speech broadcast by government-run Radio Centrafrique. "Many have gone back home and regained their former posts or have been appointed to other functions," Bozize told the CAR exiles in Brazzaville on Saturday. A representative of exiled former civil servants, who requested anonymity, said the exiles remained worried about restrictions mentioned in the presidential decree that granted them amnesty. The representative of the exiles also said the school calendar prevented some of the families from leaving the RoC immediately. The RoC is home to 1,724 CAR refugees.