DR Congo offers bounty for arrest of M23 leaders

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A general view of a dismantled Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) vehicle in a street in Bukavu on February 17, 2025. [AFP]

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are offering a five-million-dollar reward for help in arresting leaders of the M23 group that recently captured two major northern towns, the justice ministry announced.

"A reward of five million dollars is offered to any person who helps arrest the convicts Corneille Nangaa, Bertrand Bisimwa and Sultani Makenga," the ministry said in a statement dated Friday.

Nangaa, a leader in the River Congo Alliance (AFC) which is a military-political coalition to which the M23 belongs, is a former president of the DRC's electoral commission.

Bisimwa and Makenga are, respectively, the president and military chief of the M23.

Tried in absentia in Kinshasa, all three men were convicted and sentenced to death in August 2024.

DRC authorities are also offering a bounty of four million dollars for any information leading to the arrest of the three men's "accomplices on the run" and "other sought individuals", the statement said.

The M23, which, according to UN expert, is backed by some 4,000 Rwandan soldiers, resumed its fight against the government in Kinshasa in 2021 and has since seized swathes of territory in North Kivu, which borders Rwanda.

A lightning offensive in recent weeks has seen it capture the provincial capital, Goma, and Bukavu, the main city in the neighbouring province of South Kivu.

The DRC's mineral-rich east has been ravaged for three decades by conflict and atrocities.