Ugandan security agents arrested a Catholic priest accused of collaborating with northern cult-like rebels waging a brutal 18-year-old war against the government, officials said today.
Father Matthew Ojara is being held at Gulu police station after being taken late on Monday from his official residence at Christ the King church in Kitgum town, 300 km (185 miles) north of the capital Kampala, they said.
"He has been arrested in connection with rebel collaboration and he is going to appear in court where all the evidence will be displayed," Kitgum District Commissioner Okot Lapolo said.
An army spokesman confirmed Father Ojara had been arrested, but declined to give any more details.
The head of the Catholic church in northern Uganda, where some 1.6 million people have fled the conflict between government troops and rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), expressed surprise at the arrest.
"I have been informed that he has been arrested but I do not know the reasons behind it," Archbishop John Baptist Odama told Reuters by telephone. "I know him well and trust him I do not think he can do that (help the LRA)."
Uganda's army has arrested scores of people it accuses of helping the rebels led by Joseph Kony, a dreadlocked fighter who claims to talk to spirits.
The rebels are notorious for routinely targeting civilians, mutilating their victims and reinforcing their ranks by kidnapping tens of thousands of children.
The Ugandan army says recent victories have fragmented the rebels into small bands reduced to ambushing villagers for food.
But aid workers recently given access to those uprooted by the civil war, most of whom live in squalid camps, said on Friday the humanitarian situation is dire and while the Ugandan army has hit rebels hard it is unclear when the war will end.