U.N. opens investigation of Congo war crimes

updated 4:58 p.m. ET Nov. 26, 2008

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. officials have opened investigations into whether war crimes have been committed in eastern Congo, saying they have alarming evidence of targeted killings and possibly massacres of civilians.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon raised the possibility of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a report Wednesday to the Security Council that recommends U.N. peacekeepers who make up the world's largest such contingent should remain in Congo through 2009.

"The forced displacement of populations and evidence of the targeted killings of civilians are alarming. In the current climate, the possibility of massacres of civilians cannot be ruled out," he said in the report.

Alan Doss, the U.N.'s top envoy to Congo, told the council that the peacekeeping force, known as MONUC, had recently opened "several investigations into alleged massacres and extra-judicial executions."

"All belligerents have committed serious atrocities against civilians," Doss said. "Women and children have suffered most from the recurrent fighting. Sexual violence is rampant and many armed groups continue to recruit children into their ranks."

Reports of dozens of killings
Doss said a team has begun investigating the possible killings of at least 26 people — a figure that could grow "substantially higher" — around Kiwanja, about 45 miles north of Goma, the provincial capital. The inquiry followed reports that rebels killed dozens of people two weeks ago while fending off an attack from the army, pro-government Mai Mai militias and Rwandan Hutu rebels.

"We don't want to rush to judgment, it's important. But, we do know that those killings occurred in areas that the CNDP had taken over," said Doss, referring to the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, headed by rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.

His comments came as government officials reported finding two mass graves in eastern Congo containing as many as 2,000 bodies. Justice Minister Luzolo Bambi said the graves were found Saturday in Bukavu town in a plot of land formerly owned by a member of the Congolese Rally for Democracy, a Rwandan-backed rebel group.

In April, the International Criminal Court published an arrest warrant for CNDP's chief of staff, Congolese militia leader Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted for the alleged forced conscription of child soldiers in the Ituri region of eastern Congo about five years ago.

"The CNDP is one of the groups against which there are credible reports of serious crimes committed in the two Kivu provinces — including sexual crimes of unspeakable cruelty," the court had said.

Ban reported that Congolese and foreign armed groups have committed serious human rights abuses with impunity, including mass killings, rapes, torture, abductions, forced recruitment of child soldiers, forced labor and sexual slavery.

Those include, according to his report, "a resumption of atrocities" against Congolese civilians by the notorious Ugandan rebel group Lord's Resistance Army. It abducted some 177 Congolese children and killed an estimated 76 adults between mid-September and early October, Ban reported.

Arrest warrants issued
The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for leaders of that rebel group, which has been fighting a 20-year insurgency in northern Uganda.

About 1.35 million people are displaced by the Congolese fighting between rebel and government forces in the areas of North and South Kivu and Ituri, Ban said.

Ban's fears, including the risk that the conflict could spill over into the broader region, reflect growing international concerns.

In a report Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch charged that Congo's government, on orders from the president, had killed an estimated 500 opposition members, dumping the bodies in the Congo River and in mass graves. President Joseph Kabila's spokesman called the report "nonsense."

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