Rewards for Justice is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information on ISIS-DRC leader Seka Musa Baluku.
Under Seka Musa Baluku’s leadership, ISIS-DRC targets, kills, maims, rapes, and commits other sexual violence and engages in abduction of civilians, including children. The group also recruits and uses children during attacks and for forced labor in the DRC’s Beni territory. ISIS-DRC, also known as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and Madina at Tauheed Wau Mujahedeen, among other names, has unleashed brutal violence against Congolese citizens and regional military forces across North Kivu and Ituri Provinces in Eastern DRC. The group killed more than 849 civilians in 2020 alone, according to the UN Security Council.
In March 2021, the Department of State designated Baluku as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). At the same time, the Department also designated ISIS-DRC as a Foreign Terrorist Organizations and as a SDGT.
As a result of these designations, among other consequences, all property and interests in property of those designated that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them. Foreign financial institutions that knowingly conduct or facilitate any significant transaction on behalf of Baluku or ISIS-DRC could be subject to U.S. correspondent account or payable-through account sanctions. Additionally, it is a crime to knowingly provide material support or resources to ISIS-DRC or to attempt or conspire to do so.
The ADF was previously sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the United Nations under the UN Security Council’s DRC sanctions regime in 2014 for its violence and atrocities. The U.S. Department of the Treasury also sanctioned Baluku and five other ADF members in 2019 under the Global Magnitsky sanctions program for their roles in serious human rights abuse. In 2020, the UN designated Baluku for additional sanctions under its DRC sanctions program.
