News
EA officials complicit in rape of Congo – UN experts
A prisoner with bound wrists pleads while being beaten by government soldiers just outside Goma in eastern Congo. Photo/REUTERS
Posted Monday, December 7 2009 at 00:00
However, Uganda People’s Defence Forces spokesman Col Felix Kulayigye described the charges in the report as unfounded.
“We have not been to Kivu and we don’t intend to go there. All that talk does not make any sense to us,” he told The EastAfrican.
Tanzanian officials’ motives for involvement with a Congolese arms dealer named in the report may reflect “attempts to retain Tanzanian influence over politico-economic interests in South Kivu, notably the smuggling of fuel across Lake Tanganyika to the DRC from Tanzania as well as the smuggling of mineral resources from South Kivu to Tanzania,” the report suggests.
Embezzlement
A joint Rwanda-DRC military offensive against rebels in North Kivu earlier this year, known as Umoja Wetu, was apparently “crippled due to the embezzlement of several million US dollars in operational funds by top officers” of the Congolese and Rwandan military, the report adds.
The UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to give it its official title, was established pursuant to resolution 1857 (2008).
It consists of Raymond Debelle (Belgium), Kokouma Diallo (Guinea), Christian Dietrich (United States), Claudio Gramizzi (Italy) and Dinesh Mahtani (Britain).
Additional reporting by Mark Kapchanga in Nairobi
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