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Bodies of missing UN experts found in DR Congo

France24, March 28, 2017 – The bodies of two UN experts and an interpreter who went missing in the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this month have been found, and one of them was decapitated, a government spokesman said Tuesday.
“It’s now a certainty. It is the two investigators. We identified the third body in the grave with them as their Congolese interpreter,” Communications Minister Lambert Mende said.
The bodies were discovered by villagers in shallow graves in Congo’s Central Kasai province on Monday, two weeks after the two UN experts, Michael Sharp of the United States and Zaida Catalan of Sweden, and their local colleagues disappeared there.
Sharp, Catalan, interpreter Betu Tshintela, driver Isaac Kabuayi and two motorbike drivers went missing on March 12 while looking into recent large-scale violence and alleged human rights violations by the Congolese army and local militia groups.
Their disappearance is the first time UN experts have been reported missing in Congo, Human Rights Watch has said, and it is the first recorded disappearance of international workers in the Kasai provinces.
Parts of Congo, particularly the east, have experienced insecurity for decades, but violence in the Kasai provinces in central Congo represents a new expansion of tensions.
The Kamwina Nsapu militia has been fighting security forces since last year, with the violence increasing after security forces killed the militia’s leader in August. More than 400 people have been killed and more than 200,000 displaced since then, according to the UN.
(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP, REUTERS)

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