Two Kony Wives, Three Children Repatriated from Central African Republic

Two wives of Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and three children were on Thursday received at the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces airbase in Entebbe after being flown in from Bangui, the Central African Republic.

Ugandan national Ikol Grace, 33, arrived with her two children, Ayuma Maria, 8, and Oryema Bosco, 2. She was accompanied by South Sudanese national Aniyessi Teregina, also 33, who arrived holding one of Kony’s orphaned children aged two. The group was escorted from CAR to Uganda by the Chief of Defence Intelligence and Security, Major General Richard Otto.

Ikol Grace’s story is one of decades-long captivity. She was abducted from Amuria District in 2003 when she was just 10 years old. Aniyessi Teregina was similarly abducted in 2006 at the age of 13 from Yambio in Western Equatorial state, South Sudan. The government said she will be facilitated to travel back to her home in South Sudan in due course.

The two women were part of a larger group that escaped LRA captivity in January this year after their camp was attacked by an armed group south of Darfur, near the border of CAR, Sudan, and South Sudan. In all, eight Kony wives and 13 children fled the camp during that attack. The other women, who are Congolese and CAR citizens, were handed over to their families in their respective countries alongside their children.

This is not the first time Uganda has received LRA returnees from CAR. In 2023 and 2024, over 150 LRA returnees, including some of Kony’s wives and children, were brought back to Uganda after escaping captivity.

The repatriation was announced in a press release dated May 22, 2026, signed by Colonel Chris Magezi, Acting Director of Defence Public Information at the Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs.