Ugandan army arrests 'witch-hunters'
BBC News (14.07.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (16.07.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The Ugandan army says it has arrested 70 people across the border, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, suspected of hacking to death more than 300 people.
The army maintains a strong presence in the area, in support of a rebel movement opposed to the government in Kinshasa.
An army spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Phinehas Katirima, told the BBC the suspected killers were armed bandits known as Ninjas.
He said they had been robbing and murdering people under the pretext that they were witches.
Witch-hunt death toll rises to 843
UN Integrated Regional Information Network (12.07. 2001)/ HRWF Internatonal Secretariat (16.07.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The death toll from killings of suspected sorcerers in Ituri province in northeastern DRC has doubled from previous estimates to some 843 people as reports of more killings arrive from remote areas, a Ugandan army officer told Reuters on Wednesday. "The death toll has reached 843," military intelligence Captain Alfred Opio was quoted as saying. "I was in Aru [Ituri province] on Monday, and those are the figures I got from the governor." Maj. Bule Bangulu Mohamed, governor of Ituri province, is currently heading a commission of inquiry into the massacres, rebel-controlled Radio Candip reported on Wednesday.
According to Reuters, Opio reported a death toll of 394 on 4 July from killings carried out in June. Opio said nearly 150 suspected killers had been arrested in a joint operation by local police and the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF), which maintains a strong presence in this part of the DRC. "They are being held in a prison in Aru," Reuters quoted Opio as saying. "They say they were instructed by their chiefs to do the killing." In the village of Zaki, northwest of Aru, where 175 people were reportedly killed, dozens of bodies had been tossed into pit latrines, according to Opio, Reuters reported.
Back to the Table of Contents
