Three of the four soldiers who went missing last week Wednesday from the army's base at Camp Ayanganna are now back in barracks.
With one having already returned on Sunday and two more in the last two days, there is now only one solider still at large.
According to a source one of the soldiers was returned to camp Ayanganna by a relative on Thursday while the other returned on his own yesterday.
Last Sunday Private Kwesi Odinga Ward, one of the escaped soldiers, returned to the army base in the company of his mother, Beverley Ward and a concerned relative. Ward who was said to have been hiding at his mother's Berbice home was returned after a warrant officer persuaded her to have him return to the city base.
In a release from the army on Monday, it was said that the soldier's mother had "on arrival at Base Camp Ayanganna expressed the view that he ought not to have escaped from military custody and should face the consequences for the offence he committed."
Ward had previously been detained for being absent without leave (AWOL) and was not involved in the theft and sale of the AK-47 and M-70 rifles allegedly sold to Berbice Businessman, Mohamed Shaharudin and Rabindranauth Persaud, of 7 Dowding Street, Kitty, Georgetown.
A probe had been launched by the army in August after the two guns were stolen and two others were nearly pilfered. Six ranks were implicated in the racket and detained.
However on September 4, after the 5:30 am flag-raising ceremony, Ward and three other soldiers were discovered to be missing. They had last been seen at a staff parade the previous night.
Two of the three soldiers who were still at large, the army had said, had not been involved in the weapon's theft. However, they were being held for questioning into the attempted theft of two other rifles from the Coast Guard Unit.
The three soldiers directly linked to the theft and sale of the AK-47 and the M-70 rifles are reportedly at all times being kept under close arrest at the central army base, army sources said.
It is reported that the army intends to have them used by civil prosecutors as state witnesses in the case against Shaharudin and Persaud.
A lance corporal mandated to guard the escaped soldiers had himself been placed under close arrest last week following their disappearance.