Conflict Minerals, Rebels and Child Soldiers in Congo

This documentary video exposes the link between the Rwandan Genocide and the Congolese Holocaust.

Rwanda: Arming the perpetrators of the genocide

The Vehmgericht observe: It is important to bear in mind that these genocidal war criminals were the see that spawned the genocide in Congo(Zaire). We see elsewhere the hand of Israeli Zionism funding the Congolese military. "Kabila was the commander of thousands of troops, and Gertler was trading $2 billion of diamonds annually, he said. One day, Kabila suggested that Gertler meet the president. Laurent needed money to fight his war and offered Gertler a monopoly on Congo’s diamond sales, he said. Kabila asked for $20 million in cash. Gertler agreed."

Document - Rwanda: Arming the perpetrators of the genocide

Amnesty International June 1995 - AI Index: AFR 02/14/95

RWANDA

Arming the perpetrators of the genocide

The events which occurred in Rwanda between April and July 1994 were crimes against humanity. The arms that were supplied to the government at the time were used to carry out acts of genocide, deliberate and arbitrary killings and other grave human rights violations. There is now mounting evidence that similar types of arms continue to reach the perpetrators of these crimes who are now outside Rwanda in other countries.

Amnesty International is extremely concerned by persistent reports of large supplies of weapons and ammunition reaching the perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Rwanda, namely the Forces armées rwandaises (FAR - the former Rwandese Armed Forces) and the Interahamwe militia,¹who continue to commit human rights abuses. The supplies arrive via Goma airport in eastern Zaire. In May 1995, these reports were continuing. Some of the weapons and ammunition have been used by these forces for cross-border incursions from Zaire into Rwanda where political killings have taken place and have also been used to intimidate Rwandese refugees to prevent them from returning. Amnesty International is concerned that such abuses could escalate.

This report describes the recent secret transfer of weapons and ammunition from several countries, including Albania and Bulgaria to the exiled Rwandese armed forces in eastern Zaire by traders in the United Kingdom using aircraft registered in Ghana, Nigeria, Ukraine and Russia.²In Zaire and other countries, commanders of these exiled forces who were responsible for crimes against humanity and acts of genocide last year have purchased or negotiated transit facilities for these military supplies. They have been able to evade the February 1995 United Nations (UN) Security Council call for suspected perpetrators of genocide to be arrested and tried in cooperation with the International Tribunal on Rwanda. The exiled army and militia have been given bases to regroup and receive military training. This training involves not only Hutu exiles from Rwanda but Hutu exiles from Burundi as well. The exiled Rwandese armed forces have used imported weapons and ammunition to commit further human rights abuses, particularly political killings.

Amnesty International takes no position in principle on whether or in what circumstances it would be legitimate to resort to violence as a means to political ends. In the context of the situation of the Rwandese armed groups now in Zaire, Amnesty International is opposed to military transfers to forces which continue to be under the command of those who were responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. Amnesty International believes that these transfers are likely to result in further human rights abuses.

Furthermore, Amnesty International does not take a position in principle on punitive measures such as sanctions, embargoes or boycotts. However, the organization does oppose military, security or police transfers to governments and armed opposition groups which can reasonably be assumed to contribute to human rights abuses such as deliberate and arbitrary killings, "disappearances", torture or ill-treatment. Such transfers may include equipment, personnel, or training, as well as proven financial or logistical support for such transfers. Governments should prohibit such transfers from taking place unless it can be reasonably demonstrated that such transfers will not contribute to such human rights abuses.

Although the majority of the mass murders which began in Rwanda on 6 April 1994 were carried out using local farming implements such as machetes and hoes, the killings were largely initiated or supervised by members of the security forces who had more sophisticated light weaponry. In most cases when the killers met resistance, they first used grenades and then firearms, including automatic rifles. After the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) took power on 19 July 1994, most of the former FAR and the mainly Hutu militia fled into Zaire taking with them weapons made in Belgium, China, France, South Korea and South Africa. At first the Zairian army in the Goma area confiscated many of these weapons, but later the Rwandese forces who fled to eastern Zaire were allowed to retain most of their weapons. Since then, some of the weapons confiscated by the Zairian army are reported to have been sold back to the exiled FAR commanders.

Since December 1994 many of the 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers of the former FAR and the Interahamwe militia who were responsible for crimes against humanity in 1994 have been regrouping in Zaire where they are re-arming and undergoing military training under the leadership of their former senior commanders. They are commanded by, amongst others, the former head of the FAR and the Presidential Guard who was in charge during the mass killings in 1994 and the colonel responsible for arming the Interahamwe since their creation in 1992.

The information in this report comes from various sources including first hand accounts as well as unpublished and published information which has been made available to and confirmed by Amnesty International. The aim of this report is to urge governments, particularly those named in this report, to investigate the transfer emanating from, or in transit through, their countries to Central Africa of weapons and ammunition which are being used to carry out human rights abuses and which could easily fuel further acts of mass killing.

Arms supplies via Goma airport

Despite denials by Zairian government officials, there are numerous reports that the commanders of the exiled Rwandese armed forces have been involved in the procurement of large supplies of weapons and ammunition from abroad via Goma airport. The Zairian authorities and the international community have failed to take effective action against this supply of arms, despite a UN arms embargo which remains in force.

Allegations that between ten and twelve plane-loads of arms were delivered from Bulgaria to Goma in Russian Ilyushin cargo aircraft "over the past three months" were first made on 10 April 1995 by Robin Cook, the United Kingdom (UK) Shadow Minister on Foreign Affairs, who visited Goma on 24 March 1995. He claimed that a "UN source" had confirmed this and he called for the arms deliveries to be stopped in accordance with the UN arms embargo on Rwanda which was established on 17 May 1994.³

Following this allegation, the Zairian Minister of Defence, Admiral Mavua Mudina, and several top military leaders visited Goma as a "commission of inquiry". On 15 April 1995, Admiral Mudina released a statement denying reports of arms supplies to Goma and also denying that groups of Hutu militia from Rwanda and Burundi were training on Zairian soil.

However, Amnesty International has confirmed that night flights into Goma by large cargo aircraft continued into mid-May 1995, usually on Tuesdays at around 11.00pm despite the fact that the airport does not officially have night landing facilities and that normal cargo flights occur only during the day. These secret night landings are alleged to be large cargo planes carrying arms and ammunition deliveries. Goma airport is the only airport in eastern Zaire capable of receiving large cargo aircraft and is strictly guarded by the Zairian security police, the Service national d'intelligence et de protection (SNIP), National Intelligence and Protection Service.

Witnesses at Goma airport saw three cargo planes with English-speaking pilot crews who had flown in weapons on 4 April 1995, reportedly via Gabon. Zairian soldiers at the airport claimed that the large quantity of weapons were delivered for use by the 1,500 troops of the Contingent zaïrois pour la sécurité dans les camps (CZSC), the Zairian Contingent for Security in the Camps, who are responsible for policing the refugee camps run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). However, this claim is disputed by witnesses who state that the CZSC were given their personal weapons from the local Zairian garrison stocks and did not need three large cargo plane-loads of weapons. The CZSC is monitored by 27 international staff of the Civilian Security Liaison Group. Apparently, the latter's mandate does not cover the airport. Another sighting was reportedly made in Goma during April 1995 of a Liberian-registered cargo aircraft.

A UK television program due to be broadcast on 13 June 1995 describes a series of arms flights to Goma for the exiled Hutu armed forces⁴. During 1994, these flights were made by Boeing 707 aircraft registered in Ghana and Nigeria but between November 1994 and May 1995 the aircraft used were a Ukranian-registered Antonov 124 as well as Ilyushin 76 cargo aircraft registered in both the Ukraine and Russia. They have delivered arms from Plovdiv and Burgas in Bulgaria to Goma for the exiled Hutu armed forces, usually landing on Tuesday nights around 11.00pm. Fuel stops have been made in Cairo, Egypt, and in one instance in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. One such delivery was reportedly received in the presence of the former Prime Minister of Rwanda, Jean Kambanda, and a former leader of the Interahamwe, Jean-Baptiste Gatete, who are now in exile.

Arms caches are said to have been established along the Zaire/Rwanda border between 5 and 7 km inside Zaire. One such cache in the Parc National des Volcans near the border with north west Rwanda was seen to contain, among other things, French M60 medium machine guns, AK47 assault rifles, fragmentation grenades in boxes with US markings and South African 7.62 ammunition. The US grenades are said to have been obtained by exchanging or buying weapons from the Angolan armed opposition group, the Uniâo Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, which has operated from Zaire and which is also subject to a UN arms embargo.

Reports of secret arms flights to the exiled former FAR and Interahamwe via Goma airport date back to July 1994. In November 1994, four pilots employed by a UK company admitted publicly to having flown four large charter plane-loads of small arms, mainly hand grenades, rifles and ammunition of Chinese and Russian origin, from Israel and Albania to Goma during April 1994⁵. The supplies are said to have included Israeli-made weaponry such as Uzi sub-machine guns, as well as weapons such as grenades captured by the Israeli army from the Egyptian army in 1973 and Chinese ammunition obtained through Tirana. One pilot told Amnesty International that he was "tricked" into flying 36.5 tonnes of arms and ammunition into Goma airport at night, thinking it was a delivery to the Zairian government, but said it was in fact for the exiled Rwandese army. A UK company organised the flights, one from Tel Aviv and other flights from Tirana, the Albanian capital, where Israeli and Albanian officials are alleged to have supplied the arms and ammunition. A Nigerian-registered-and-owned aircraft was reported to have been used, as well as a Ghanaian-registered Boeing 707 based in the United Kingdom.

Since the imposition of the UN arms embargo in May 1994, governments of the major arms suppliers to the previous government of Rwanda, notably the governments of France and South Africa, have stated that they no longer authorize arms sales to Rwanda..The French authorities were reported in February 1995 to be investigating a French-registered company which allegedly sold Kalashnikov rifles illegally to Rwanda using a Kenya-based cargo company. However, allegations of French and South African military collaboration with the exiled Hutu armed forces have continued.⁶

Amnesty International has received reports that local Zairian soldiers have sold arms to the former FAR commanders which they had confiscated in July 1994 from retreating FAR soldiers. In April 1995, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, the former Rwandese Ministry of Defence official widely alleged to have organized the supply of weapons and coordinated activities of the Interahamwe leading up to and during the genocide, was reported to be second-in-command of the exiled forces and based in the Chimanga camp near the Zaire border with south west Rwanda. In March 1995, Colonel Bagosora and a Zairian commander at Katindo were questioned by the Zairian gendarmerie about arms trafficking. The Zairian commander was accused of selling arms confiscated from the FAR last July. A local businessman said that the deals were becoming increasingly open and that sales had included 1,500 grenades and at least 30 rifles. Another witness claims that at least six multiple-barrel light artillery batteries were confiscated from the FAR last July by the Zairian garrison in Goma, but there were only two remaining by May 1995, the rest having been sold back to the former FAR.

Political killings and death threats against refugees

Since February 1995, former Interahamwe militiamen and FAR soldiers have been using their accumulated stocks of weapons and ammunition to mount cross-border raids which have included deliberate and arbitrary killings of civilians. They have also used their military strength to create a climate of intimidation including death threats in many of the refugee camps to persuade Rwandese refugees not to return to their homes in Rwanda and to force young men to join the militia and the regrouped FAR.

During April 1995, up to 30 armed groups of Hutu were situated along eastern Zaire's border with Rwanda. Militia crossed the border into Rwanda at night on an almost daily basis, as has been observed at the Kamanyola and Kibumba camps. Cross-border raids have also increased in the south west of Rwanda and the north west of Burundi. One aim of these incursions has been to target political opponents, although the raids are also linked to cattle rustling and attacks on infrastructure and military targets. The Head of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights office in Rwanda stated publicly on 14 April 1995 that:

"Dozens of people have been killed in these attacks from across the border since the end of January...It was reported yesterday that there was another incursion that resulted in casualties...The motivations for the attacks vary...[and include] killing as a punishment of people who have returned to Rwanda without permission of the refugee camp authorities...[and] killing of people who appear to be cooperating with the Rwandese government, for example, those who have handed over their weapons or have given information about who took part in the genocide..."

Dr Anatole Bucyendore, a Hutu regional medical officer and head of the AIDS prevention program in Rwanda, was shot dead and his two-year-old child was repeatedly stabbed to death in Gisenyi, Rwanda on 25 February 1995. His wife and other child were severely wounded in the attack. Dr Bucyendore had fled to Goma from Rwanda in 1994. While in Goma he was threatened on various occasions that if he returned to Rwanda he and his family would be killed by the Interahamwe. Nevertheless, Dr Bucyendore decided to return to Gisenyi to work at the hospital there. Before his assassination, he had again received death threats, reportedly also from unnamed persons in Goma.

The UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) reported on 6 March 1995 that four insurgents captured in Kigali believed to be members of the Interahamwe and former army had sackloads of landmines and grenades which the insurgents said were to be used to attack civilian targets in Kigali, including the central market place, as part of a concerted destabilisation campaign. They said they came from Mugunga camp near Goma. Agents of the former government used landmines and other explosives extensively to terrorise the civilian population during 1993 and early 1994, particularly in Kigali. On 1 April 1995 the mayor (Bourgmestere) of Gishoma was assassinated by insurgents surrounding his house with a landmine trap using an Italian-designed TS-50 anti-personnel mine (which are manufactured in Italy as well as Egypt and Singapore). UNAMIR soldiers said that the trap could only have been placed by persons with specialist knowledge.

Deliberate and arbitrary killings of civilians during cross border raids have been coupled with increased intimidation in the refugee camps in eastern Zaire. On 31 March 1995, a refugee who returned to Rwanda from Kibumba camp in eastern Zaire told UNHCR officials in Gisenyi that Interahamwe militia were issuing death threats as part of a pattern of intimidation to young men who were reluctant to join the militia or who wanted to return to Rwanda. The CZSC contingent of Zairian troops is said to enjoy some cooperation from camp leaders but is frustrated in its attempts to obtain the cooperation of refugees when investigating such incidents.

There are various reasons given by UNHCR officials for why few Rwandese refugees have been willing to return to their homes in Rwanda. One of them is intimidation by militia and supporters of the former government. Another is the persistent rumours of reprisal attacks by the RPA. Furthermore, there are genuine reports of arbitrary detentions and killings by the RPA in Rwanda. According to an international commission of inquiry, both RPA soldiers and armed Hutu militia were responsible on 22 April 1995 for the deliberate and arbitrary killing of internally displaced persons at the Kibeho camp in south west Rwanda.

It is not only Rwandese exiles who have received arms and military training in eastern Zaire. Hutu refugees from Burundi are reported to have undergone military training with their exiled Rwandese counterparts in camps near Uvira in eastern Zaire where about 50,000 Hutu refugees fled from Burundi. They have also received weapons which match the supplies reported to have arrived at Goma - Chinese AKM assault rifles and landmines, Russian RPG rockets - as well as weapons previously supplied to Burundi or Rwanda - German G3 rifles and Belgian FAL guns. Russian rockets said to have been captured from insurgents from eastern Zaire had Arabic characters written on them and were called "a present from Cairo" by a Burundi military officer.

Danger of the present situation

The proliferation of arms in the region, and particularly the supplies to those who organized mass killings in Rwanda during 1994, is recognized by governments and inter-governmental organizations, as well as non-governmental organizations working in the region, as contributing significantly to human rights abuses and a general destabilisation of the region. The UN Security Council, the Organization of African Unity and the European Parliament have all expressed grave concern about continued arms flows to the region and proposed ways of halting the flow.

In addition to the 17 May 1994 UN arms embargo on Rwanda, on 29 March 1995 the UN Security Council called on all states "in particular neighbouring states, to refrain from supplying or allowing the transit of arms and to deny sanctuary and any other assistance to those extremist elements which seek to destabilise the situation in Burundi." An arms embargo was also placed on Zaire by the European Union in 1993. In a report on 20 April 1995, the Organization of African Unity urged all countries to stem the illegal flow of arms to the region. On 18 May 1995 the governments of Zaire and Burundi expressed their joint concern about "the deterioration in security on their common border stemming from the proliferation of weapons in the sub-region." Amnesty International takes no position on arms embargoes as such; it is concerned that some governments have continued to allow arms to reach known human rights violators who are likely to use them to commit further abuses.

In February 1994, before the start of the genocide in Rwanda, Amnesty International had already expressed concern that arms had been transferred from the former Rwandese government authorities and the FAR to Hutu militia who deliberately killed over 2,000 unarmed civilians, most of them Tutsi. By May 1994, Amnesty International reported that the FAR was helping to coordinate the killings, and that commanders of the FAR had supplied military weapons to both the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militia for this purpose, while the government and military authorities were involved at the highest level in orchestrating and directing the murder campaign. The Presidential Guard was reported to have been in charge of military training of the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi.

Now, one year after the mass killings which claimed over half a million lives in Rwanda, the supply of arms and ammunition through Goma in eastern Zaire to those who have been responsible for crimes against humanity requires urgent action by the international community.

Bringing the perpetrators to justice

Leaders of the former FAR, the Presidential Guard and the Interahamwe militia include many of those who planned and organized the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. If arms supplies continue to reach the forces under their command, there is a danger that they may continue to commit large scale human rights abuses. Many of those now in exile in Zaire and other countries are not only allowed by governments to evade justice, but are also reported to be helping the re-arming and re-training of the same forces in exile⁷. One way of ensuring that this does not continue is for the perpetrators of the genocide to be brought to justice.

Amnesty International has repeatedly called on governments to provide legal, financial and human resources to help the International Tribunal for Rwanda, set up by the UN Security Council on 8 November 1994 to try people responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of humanitarian law committed in Rwanda between 1 January and 31 December 1994. According to UN Security Council Resolution 978 of 27 February 1995, all states should arrest and bring to justice in accordance with international standards "persons found within their territory against whom there is sufficient evidence that they were responsible" for crimes against humanity in Rwanda and, in doing so, states should cooperate with the International Tribunal.

Despite this international obligation, many of the former Rwandese government leaders live in Zaire and Kenya and move freely to the refugee and military camps and to other African countries such as Gabon, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon, as well as to countries in Europe. One report claimed that "While Zaire and Tanzania are the centres of military activity, ... many on the UN's list of 400 people accused of genocide are able to meet, raise funds and travel between Kenya and the camps [in Zaire and Tanzania] without hindrance."⁸These officials are reported to include some of the Hutu extremist leaders whose group is known as Akazu and who are said to finance the exiled militia, as well as founders of Radio-television des Mille Collines, a radio station which regularly broadcast messages to incite Hutu militia to commit acts of genocide. A former Rwandese diplomat who is suspected of playing a key role in securing South African arms for the FAR and Interahamwe militia, is reported to reside in South Africa.

While some of the top exiled commanders of the FAR have returned to Rwanda, most are reported to have left their hotel accommodation and gone to live at military bases in Zaire. Many are said to reside at the Lac Vert "chiefs of staff" camp south west of Mugungu in eastern Zaire under the leadership of Major General Augustin Bizimungu, head of the former FAR and the Presidential Guard during the 1994 genocide. These commanders have been free to travel and to obtain and distribute military supplies at bases without interference from host governments. They have organized military training of the former members of the FAR at military bases near Mugunga south of Goma and Panzi near Bukavu where the bulk of the defeated army was housed until late November and December 1994, as well as a base near Chimanga, another base between the volcanic hills near the Parc National des Volcans on the border with north-west Rwanda, and in camps on the Island of Idjwi in Lake Kivu. The border areas with Rwanda near these camps are sites of cross-border insurgency during which human rights abuses have been carried out. According to ex-FAR soldiers who have deserted, in late 1994 several hundred ex-FAR troops and commanders were also moved to another secret camp in the Central African Republic for special training.⁹

Commanders have also been allowed to organize the supply of weapons to members of the former Interahamwe, many of whom reside in the refugee camps in eastern Zaire. These refugee camps run from Katale, Kahinda and Kibumba in the north Kivu region to Kamanyola, Kanganiro, Luvungi, Lubarika and Luberizi near Uvira in the south Kivu region closer to the border with Burundi. Hutu militia living in these camps are reported to have declined in number as they are recruited into the ex-FAR, but those who remain try to create a climate of fear in the refugee camps. Up to one third of the Hutu refugees in camps near Bukavu and Uvira are originally from Burundi and fled to Rwanda after the massacres in Burundi during November 1993.

On 31 May 1995, an international warrant for the arrest of a former leader of the Interahamwe, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, was issued from Belgium. Colonel Bagosora was reported in November 1994 to have said that he wished to "wage a war that will be long and full of dead people until the minority Tutsi are finished".¹⁰In March 1995 he said that a destabilisation insurgency campaign and a small scale incursion into Rwanda was being planned for mid-July (19 July 1995 will be the first anniversary of the RPF victory) after which recognition of the need for negotiations around the August 1993 Arusha Peace Accords between the former and present government of Rwanda will be advanced by a "major European power".

Many of the former FAR commanders recognize that the Rwandese government will not countenance their free return to Rwanda and so have curtailed public threats of human rights violations and expressed support for international negotiations which they hope would include a blanket amnesty for previous crimes against humanity. Major General Bizimungu nevertheless stated publicly in March 1995 that "The [former] Rwandese army has not lost the war" and one of his senior commanders stated on 4 March that the ex-FAR would "kill all Tutsi who prevent us from returning". Militia commanders in eastern Zaire from Rwanda and Burundi stated that "our struggle is one and the same".¹¹On 4 April 1995, Major General Bizimungu, and 13 other senior ex-FAR commanders released a signed Declaration of Support for the Rassemblement pour le retour et la démocratie au Rwanda (RDR), Rally for Return and Democracy in Rwanda. The RDR claims to be a new political entity excluding the old "government in exile". It is seeking a negotiated return of all exiled Rwandese and is said to favour a blanket amnesty for all crimes committed in the ethnic conflict.

Recommendations

Amnesty International takes no position on punitive measures such as sanctions, embargoes or boycotts, but is opposed as a matter of principle to military, security or police transfers to governments and armed opposition groups that can reasonably be assumed to contribute to human rights abuses such as deliberate and arbitrary killings, "disappearances", torture or ill-treatment. Such transfers may include equipment, personnel, or training, as well as proven financial or logistical support for such transfers. Governments should prohibit such transfers from taking place unless it can be reasonably demonstrated that such transfers will not contribute to such human rights abuses.

Amnesty International does not take a position in principle on whether or in what circumstances it would be legitimate to resort to violence as a means to political ends. In the context of the situation of the exiled Rwandese now in Zaire, Amnesty International is opposed to military transfers to forces which continue to be under the command of those who were responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. Amnesty International believes that such transfers are likely to result in further human rights abuses.

1. Amnesty International calls on all states named in this report to:

a.carry out thorough investigations into reports that the former armed forces and militia of Rwanda now in Zaire, many of whom led or participated in crimes against humanity during 1994, have obtained - and may still be obtaining - weapons or ammunition emanating from or in transit through their countries;

b. act immediately to prevent the transfer of any weapons, ammunition or military training to the former armed forces and militia of Rwanda which are likely to contribute to further human rights abuses such as deliberate and arbitrary killings.

2. Amnesty International calls on the government of Zaire to:

a. allow the independent international monitoring of all cargo landing in Goma or any other airport in Zaire which may contain weapons or ammunition that are likely to be used by the former FAR or the Rwandese militia to carry out human rights abuses.

3. Amnesty International calls on all individual governments and inter-governmental organizations, including the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity, to take immediate practical steps to:

a. ensure that suspected perpetrators of crimes against humanity are brought to justice in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 978 of 27 February 1995; adopt legislation to enable authorities to cooperate with the International Tribunal on Rwanda; provide resources, as well as any relevant information on human rights violations, to the International Tribunal, and practical support to help rebuild the judiciary in Rwanda to ensure fair trials which exclude the death penalty;

b. ensure that any military transfers to the armed forces of Rwanda and Burundi are not used to commit human rights violations such as deliberate and arbitrary killings and are not distributed to militia likely to commit such violations;

c.provide better support for adequate civil policing in both Rwanda and Burundi which conforms to international standards, including standards of impartiality to help protect the human rights of all sectors of the population, whether Hutu or Tutsi.

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1In 1992, the ruling party of the former president of Rwanda, the Mouvement républicain national pour la démocratie et le développement (MRND), National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development, created a private Hutu militia known as the Interahamwe ("Those who attack together") which initiated a pattern of deliberate and arbitrary killings of Tutsi civilians and moderate Hutu spokepersons. Another allied private militia known as the Impazumagambi ("Those who have the same goal") was created by the MRND's coalition partner, the Coalition pour la défense de la république (CDR), Coalition for the Defence of the Republic. These militia and their commanders, backed by their counterparts in the FAR and Presidential Guard, planned and perpetrated the mass killings in Rwanda which began on 6 April 1994 in which over half a million people were killed in the space of three months.

2This report does not address the many critical human rights issues facing Rwanda at present which are detailed in other reports by Amnesty International in 1994 and 1995.

3UN Security Council Resolution 918 of 17 May 1994 established a Committee to gather information to help enforce the arms embargo. UN officials have said that in effect the embargo applies to all Rwandese nationals.

4The Cook Report, Carlton Television, United Kingdom.

5The Big Story, Twenty-Twenty Television, United Kingdom, 17 November 1994

6 Human Rights Watch Arms Project, "Rwanda/Zaire: rearming with Impunity", Washington, May 1995.

7For example, in April 1995, a meeting was filmed by a CNN television team in a Nairobi motel between an alleged arms trafficker from overseas and persons claiming to be the exiled Minister of Foreign Affairs of Rwanda, the exiled Minister of Finance of Rwanda, and a Lieutenant Colonel of the ex-FAR. The Rwandese threatened the camera crew and refused to answer questions about the meeting.

8The Guardian (UK), 19 April 1995

9Interviewed for the Cook Report, op cit

10Human Rights Watch, op cit

11BBC Newsnight, 15 March 1995

Amnesty International June 1995AI Index: AFR 02/14/95

Behind the Scenes: Warlords’ Deadly Battle in Congo

Behind the Scenes: Warlords’ Deadly Battle in Congo

By Keith Harmon Snow*
Toward Freedom
August 9, 2007

The "four-day war" that rocked Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo from March 22-26, 2007 was called a "cleaning" by insiders. Everyone knew it was going to happen, the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) did nothing to stop it and the death count was significantly under-reported. The realities behind the scenes remain cloaked by the international media and world institutions, and the big losers, yet again, are the Congolese people. This is the inside story.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is today both the richest and poorest country in the world. First robbed of its rubber and ivory (1890-1908) by Belgium’s King Leopold—whose enterprise of slavery claimed ten million Congolese lives but was masked by a humanitarian "anti-slavery" propaganda campaign—the plunder of the Congo was advanced by Belgian colonial interests from 1908 to "independence" on June 30, 1960.

Following a coup d’etat orchestrated in part by Israeli American Maurice Tempelsman and his corporate allies, the country emerged from the first Congo crises (1960-1967) with U.S.-backed Colonel Joseph Mobutu installed as President.(1) Mobutu and his corporate partners plundered Congo from 1965 to 1996, and many of the same "untouchables" of the Mobutu era—Maurice Tempelsman, Etienne Davignon, George Forrest, the Blattners—are plundering Congo today.(2)

The Pentagon backed the overthrow of Mobutu in 1996-1997. This invasion was led by Rwanda and Uganda, backed by the U.S., Canada, U.K., Belgium and Israel. Washington’s support of the overthrow had to do with corporate interests in the region. International businesses wanted to reorganize the power structure in the region to better exploit the Congo's riches and displace deeply entrenched competitors. By July 1996, Mobutu was negotiating with George H.W. Bush over Barrick Gold interests in Zaire's Kilo Moto goldfields and for Adolph Lundin interests in copper/cobalt in Katanga. The invasion of Zaire swung into action after Paul Kagame visited the Pentagon in August 1996.(3)

Congolese "rebel" warlords like Jean-Pierre Bemba, Azarias Ruberwa, Arthur Zahidi Ngoma, and Mbusa Nyamwisi fought against the seat of power in Kinshasa held by Laurent Kabila (1998-2001) and then Joseph Kabila, his purported son. Multinational corporations, criminal networks and regional governments backed "rebel" and "government" forces—often both—and all sides committed massive atrocities. Billions of dollars in plantation commodities, minerals and timber exited Congo during the war were shipped to Western markets.

As the Congo "peace process" unfolded, Jean-Pierre Bemba became one of four warlords rewarded with a vice-presidency in DRC’s transitional government (2003-2006); sworn in on July 17, 2003, he held the Finance and Economic portfolio. Bemba was one of five significant challengers to the transitional president, Joseph Kabila, in the 2006 elections, which fielded 33 presidential candidates. Bemba believes himself Congo’s savior and rightful leader, and he provoked hostilities, riots and parliamentary chaos throughout the transition, elections and post-elections periods.

Behind the machinations of power in Congo lie hundreds of billions of dollars to be made in exploiting Congo’s riches in the next decade alone. From 1996-2007, despite multiple peace accords, some six to ten million people died in Congo’s wars.

THE BIG MAN’S WAR

On March 22, 2007 war broke out in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). For the next four days Congolese government troops—Forces Armees Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC)—backing newly elected President Joseph Kabila fought with "rebel" soldiers fighting for former opposition leader and failed Presidential candidate Jean Pierre Bemba.

Eyewitnesses describe how the war erupted outside the residence of Jean-Pierre Bemba, but soldiers fought it out straight down the Boulevard 30 Juin—named for Congo’s "independence" day—from one end of the city to another, to the central train station, and down the tracks to the Ndolo airport, where a major battle occurred. There was also a battle in Maluku, 80 kilometers from the city center. The war raged from March 22 to 24 and simmered from March 25 to 27; sections of Kinshasa remained no-go insecurity zones into April.

Troops with the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) spent the day of March 22 evacuating MONUC civilians and other foreigners to safe sites, but refused to evacuate Congolese nationals, even the family members of Westerners. There are no reports of MONUC troops taking action to protect Congolese lives. Banks were robbed, the embassies of Spain, Greece, Nigeria and Zimbabwe were allegedly attacked, and bullets sprayed houses, shops and businesses. Civilians were shot all over the place. The Bemba faction armed children and sent them out to loot and pillage, a tactic used by Bemba’s Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) throughout the rebellion (1998-2003), and by Rwandan and Ugandan invaders from the start (1996).

The Congolese people describe these events as the "Kinshasa War." While some 1000 people are reportedly dying every day in eastern Congo, currently, due to war-related factors, the people of Kinshasa had come to believe the war in Congo was mostly over. They were wrong.

"We have been abandoned," said Georges, a Congolese man who survived the fighting.(4) Georges is afraid to give his name, seeing that people are being silenced. "They [foreigners] do not want to help Congolese people. Officials are saying 600 people killed, but this is not the truth. Bemba put kidogo on the streets—children—and he put guns in their hands.(5) Kabila’s soldiers killed them and they killed too many people who were not soldiers."

Testimonies herein were taken in Kinshasa in late March and April 2007. All sources are unnamed either to protect them from military and intelligence networks sowing terror in Kinshasa today, or to respect their career security with the U.N. or humanitarian sector, or to protect this author from threatened retaliation.

"There’s been deaths everywhere," said a surviving businessman working with DRC officials, on April 5. "Many neighborhoods are finding that relatives have disappeared or died. At least six trucks went by filled with bodies… and there was a MONUC truck assisting with logistics. Small children were killed and their parents don’t even know where they went. Hundreds and hundreds of innocent people who had nothing to do with it are dead. They say 550 people killed? It’s more than 2000. Everything has been blamed on Bemba but they forget that Kabila’s soldiers surrounded Bemba’s house. Both Kabila and Bemba are killers."

"President Kabila has not made any speeches of mourning for all the Congolese people who have died," said another eyewitness on April 5. "It’s nothing to them. Kabila and Prime Minster Gizenga have said nothing. They’re back to business as if nothing happened. And MONUC did nothing, they ran away, they are not peacekeepers. Families all over Kinshasa are realizing today that their sons or mothers or fathers or brothers are not coming home, ever. People are feeling very frightened, because no one can tell what they saw, no can say about the killing, or they will be killed too."

"It’s safe to say that casualties exceed 100," said MONUC spokesman Kemal Saiki on April 4. "We knew the situation was tense. We knew that there was a build-up of arms in the city. But to say that this was predicted… The issue is not the exact body count, but rather that violence was used by all sides. And the Congolese don’t need enticement from outside forces to take up arms and commit violence. And who would that benefit anyways?"(6)

Reports out of Kinshasa in July 2007 indicate that killings, assassinations, tortures and detention without charge under inhuman conditions are ongoing as Kabila consolidates power in Congo. Early July saw two young sex workers murdered in Kinshasa and 12 people (seven street kids under 18) locked for weeks in "Building B2" by police for unspecified purposes. Like the March events and the greater plunder of Congo—human rights atrocities are ignored, downplayed or whitewashed by the international press.

"Not impressed by your conspiracy theory that the international media are hiding anything related to March events in Kinshasa," says one faithful MONUC official. "I know all the major international journos [journalists] here, and I can vouch for their bravery and enormous efforts they made to tell the world what was going on during this time. They risked their lives to take trips around town whilst the fighting was going on and defied (very real) fear related to falling of mortars on their apartments to file incessantly during those days. They also trudged around morgues and hospitals for days after trying to piece together a realistic death toll. But in the end, if the public isn't interested in yet another story of ‘stupid Africans slaughtering one another,’ then those stories will not make the headlines. Journos write for an audience, and if there is no audience, then their voice will not be heard."(7)

Reportage about Congo amounts to a massive deception, pitifully irrelevant, but for its efficacy in inculcating racist beliefs and manipulative mythologies, and it is not because Westerners ‘are tired of yet another story about stupid Africans slaughtering each other’ or because ‘there is no audience’ who cares enough to listen. ‘Journos" in Africa write for the perks of international travel, adventure, the prestige of appearing in print or broadcast, for career advancement, and for a paycheck. The ‘bravery’ and ‘sacrifice’ are self-perpetuating fictions of privilege and whiteness, and reportage is sanitized by the ‘journos’ internal censors and by their editors—gatekeepers of information—of media corporations that profit from predatory capitalism, its misery industries, and the permanent exploitation of people of color.

Civil servants working in Kinshasa believe that the death toll easily exceeded 2000 people, and quite likely many more than that. There are many eyewitnesses, but they can see the iron hand of repression at work around them in Kinshasa today, and they are terrified.

THE PAGE IS TURNED

It was expected that Joseph Kabila would win the presidential elections in the first round given election constraints imposed by the Kabila government and the massive funding from powerful foreign interests behind Kabila. The July 30, 2006 presidential vote reportedly recorded some 16.9 million votes, with Kabila winning 45 percent and Bemba 20 percent. What was not foreseen is that other presidential candidates would hold enough power to throw their votes to Bemba and shift the outcome in Bemba’s favor. The elections were severely manipulated in favor of money and power. Many people were paid off, many positions effectively purchased.

On August 20, 2006 elections results were announced in DRC and the troops loyal to Bemba fought for several days with Kabila’s forces. DRC's war-battered people denounced the fighting between the candidates and their supporters, saying they wanted an end to armed struggle, but the public was powerless in the face of the warlords.

Bemba won Kinshasa. When he didn’t win in other parts of the country he accused Kabila and his cronies of electoral fraud. The accusations were true, but Bemba was also involved in dirty electioneering. Other candidates seen as hopeful possibilities—like Oscar Kashala, a Congolese doctor with bright ideas and fresh energy who hailed from Harvard University—were blocked or sidelined. Kashala was arrested, along with 32 foreigners, and charged with a coup plot in May 2006, and the Kashala campaign was crippled, and that was the end of that.(8)

"There’s no leadership in this country. It’s not Bemba, and it’s not Kabila," Oscar Kashala said privately, ten days after the July 2006 elections. "I was prevented from campaigning. We came to this country with a logistical and strategic plan to run a campaign. On May 15 we were ready, we had our airplanes all lined up, but they arrested everyone. All our phones were being tapped. They even went to the U.S. to offer our financial backers options to get involved in the mining. Kabila’s pressure worked: some supporters were worried. Then they started the mercenary stories in the press. They wanted to hurt me, and they did. But we are the only group who has not cheated in these elections. We are the only group who has no guns. We have not lied to the people."(9)

Other candidates hailed from the Mobutu regime, men like Vincent de Paul Lunda Bululu, a Brussels educated former Special Adviser to President Mobutu and Bemba supporter, and Christophe Mbozo N'Kodia Puanga, a Minister of Energy and Mines under Mobutu. Both were tied throughout the war with the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), backed and controlled by Rwanda. Candidate Pierre Pay-Pay was Minister of Economy and Trade under Mobutu and then Governor of the Central Bank—Bank du Zaire—from 1985-1991, a period of profound graft and corruption backed by western enterprises, amidst a climate of terror against the people of Congo.(10)

The involvement of Mobutu’s cronies in privatizing natural resources and enslaving the labor pool, to profit foreign capital involved then as now, was hidden by the Western press. International reporters who covered Zaire in the 1980’s and 1990’s perpetuated the invisibility of the Mobutu enterprise and its western capitalist partners.(11)

The Kabila government required a $50,000 fee from presidential candidates in the 2006 elections. The "international community" spent more than $500 million dollars on the elections, setting up 50,000 polling stations—and arming security forces with state-of-the-art Robocop equipment—all across the country.

A run-off ensued in late October 2006 after Kabila failed to get the required 50 percent of votes. Kabila had the support of Nzanga Mobutu, son of the late dictator, but former Mobutuists sided with both candidates based on the political alliances behind the scenes and the vast profits at stake.

In mid-November 2006 Bemba’s forces again rampaged in Kinshasa. The actual death toll from the first two Kinshasa rampages of Bemba’s troops will never be known. This remains true of the reign of state terror under Mobutu: the international criminal rackets plundering Congo never shine the spotlight on the atrocities of friendly, collaborating, dictators—a.k.a. their partners in business. The so-called "independent" Election Commission announced in the third week of November that Kabila won 58 percent of the votes, and Bemba 42 percent.

Jean-Pierre Bemba offered the international criminal business community the perfect guise. Bemba served as a staunch opponent to Joseph Kabila—the perfect "face" of opposition—as long as he would cooperate and accept "defeat" as dictated by the rigged elections. With Bemba behind the Kabila machine, the powerful mining cartels and money houses—Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Chase, Rothschilds, IMF, World Bank, EXIM Bank—and their pliable governments in Europe, Australia, Japan and North America, could easily uphold the fiction of democracy in Congo. Bemba as warlord—atrocities and all—would be forgotten and, as they say in Congo, "the page is turned."

Bemba did not cooperate. The stakes were too high, the promise of profit and power, the influence behind him, and the indignity of seeing Congo run by a foreigner when Bemba himself is "one hundred percent Congolese," all drove the arrogant Bemba to miscalculate his position.

On November 13, 2006, Joseph Kabila decreed that the holdout forces of Jean-Pierre Bemba and Azerias Ruberwa—another tycoon and warlord—must immediately integrate their soldiers into the FARDC command. Kabila allowed for fifteen policemen as personal guards. Bemba and Ruberwa refused. On March 5, 2007, the FARDC's chief of staff General Kisempia Sungilanga issued an ultimatum to integrate their militia into the national army or face unspecified action.

In early March 2007, Jean-Pierre Bemba returned from Portugal on his private Boeing 727. What happened next went unreported. Arriving at N’djili airport, Bemba’s heavily armed bodyguards tried to enter the Presidential Lounge, controlled by Kabila’s elite Presidential Guard, for the President only. Bemba arrived with some 20 jeeps of soldiers with rockets and machine guns and demanded access to the VIP compound. The Presidential Guard refused, and a war nearly erupted on the tarmac. Six-hundred white foreigners on two jumbo jets fresh from Europe were unloading some 20 meters away from the tense military standoff. Kabila ordered the Presidential Guard to stand down and Bemba’s gang entered the compound and had a party.

The airport incident humiliated Kabila and his elite Presidential Guard, promising a future showdown. Then on March 15 Bemba insulted Kabila in public interviews on his private radio and TV stations, accusing Kabila of "dictatorship" and "corruption" and "other foolishnesses." Insiders close to Kabila knew on March 16 that Kinshasa was doomed to a "small but brutal war between Bemba and Kabila." This journalist was informed on March 15th.

MONUC intelligence was also informed of the imminent war. "For me, trouble was imminent," says one MONUC civilian. "Every day I saw it and felt it coming. A memo from MONUC security was sent to us reminding us to respect the curfew two days before [March 20]. Meanwhile, I was very well informed, some Congolese friends called me."

Deputy Special Representative to the Secretary General, Ross Mountain, from Australia, is coordinator of MONUC security and all U.N. systems in Congo. United States diplomat William Lacey Swing, Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG), runs the MONUC show.

In October 2006, as the second round of elections concluded, some MONUC civilians were advised by MONUC security to transfer to more secure lodgings. The situation was tense and volatile, and MONUC took precautions to insure the safety of personnel. In March 2007, security plans were apparently absent even as it became clear that Kinshasa was spiraling out of control.

According to MONUC insiders, internal security memos and alerts warned that Kinshasa was going to explode. These memos reportedly began circulating as early as March 15th, after Bemba ignored the ultimatum to disarm. Days prior to March 22 apparently saw numerous "confidential" memos going from Security to chief directors of MONUC’s Divisions and Sections.

"At 9:00 AM on March 22nd people knew that things were going to happen," says another MONUC source. This source alleges that President Joseph Kabila communicated by phone with MONUC chief William Swing to request withdrawal of the MONUC soldiers and U.N. Armored Personnel Carriers from outside of Bemba’s residence in Kinshasa. "Around March 15th, Kabila called Swing and told him to move the Uruguayan troops stationed outside Bemba’s residence."

The passive MONUC response—attempts to relocate civilians at the last minute, but no efforts to stop or mitigate the killing—seemed to clear the way for the imminent war. The apparent failure by MONUC security to take proper precautions to protect MONUC civilians—never mind the general public—suggests some internal conflict or ambiguity about security protocol. Why?

Officially, MONUC was supporting the Kabila government. However, allegations have surfaced that high-level officials inside MONUC were paid off by Jean-Pierre Bemba. According to MONUC sources, there were numerous recipients, it has gone on for a long time and is still going on, and decisions were made—actions taken, or not taken—that benefited the Bemba machine.

"I know people were receiving money from Bemba," says one MONUC insider. "These are high-level MONUC people, people who are making important decisions. And it is big money. BIG money."(12) The source confirmed that payoffs have been regular and that numerous people are aware of the payoffs. (The names of key witnesses have been provided.)

Pay-offs from Jean Pierre Bemba to pivotal MONUC officials would explain MONUC’s apparent paralyses during the Kinshasa crises. This raises questions about MONUC officials receiving pay-offs from Joseph Kabila or others. There is evidence that kickbacks and payoffs of MONUC insiders have and are occurring in Kisangani, and bribery and corruption of the MONUC mission is likely occurring in other cities.

Just days after the March 22-26 war, SRSG William Swing held a "town-meeting" for all MONUC personnel in Kinshasa. Attending staff expressed frustrations about the mission and about the MONUC ‘position’ during the March events. There were reportedly many questions about security: people knew that MONUC security expected violence and that MONUC was not prepared, or not interested in being prepared. Some complained that MONUC did nothing to prevent the war.

"It was a cleaning," confirmed another deeply connected insider who for years has worked with top-level ‘players’ in mining, military and politics in Central Africa. "It is evident that MONUC knew what would happen. They knew that Bemba’s forces were in Kinshasa. They knew about the weapons buildup. Previously the EUFOR [European Union Forces] were here—these are professional killers, Special Forces, they are trained to kill, they are not MONUC—but the elections were over and the EUFOR were already gone. Nobody wants to be a witness to the killings. If we say, ‘I saw FARDC troops killing all these Bemba men and all these civilians’—I will not be safe."

GUNS, ROCKETS, TANKS FOR DEMOCRACY

Early reports in the international media counted 150 people dead and described the warfare in general terms, absent all revealing details or background. A few days after heavy fighting the German Embassy broke ranks and declared, "up to 600 people killed." The German ambassador told reporters "The military forces that faced Mr. Bemba's militias were too heavy." The German Embassy remains silent about their direct involvement in illegal mining and bloodshed in the eastern Congo however.

War broke out on March 22 but the New York Times went completely silent about events in Congo. Then on March 28, they ran a sizeable front-page feature, "After Congo Vote, Neglect and Scandal Still Reign," focused on "a recent 1200-mile trip across the country" by NYT reporter Jeffrey Gettlemen. "The unruly capital" in Kinshasa, Gettlemen commented in passing, "looks as if a war has been fought in its streets. There has been some violence there, like the periodic clashes between the presidential guard and a militia loyal to Jean-Pierre Bemba, a tycoon, former warlord and unsuccessful candidate for president." The on-going Kinshasa war was relegated to "periodic clashes." As usual there was nothing about political alliances, dirty diamond deals, mercenary ties or the machinations behind the scenes.

Most remarkable were Gettlemen’s misrepresentations of violence in Kinshasa. "But it is not tanks and bombs that have turned the streets into bone-jarring rubble and many elegant buildings into teetering shells," he wrote. "It is neglect and corruption, which persist despite the election."

Reuters reported (March 23) that "heavy gun and mortar fire shook the Congolese capital at first light on Friday in a second day of fighting between government troops and forces of a former rebel leader."(12) This was not reflected in the Gettlemen piece. On March 24, 2007, the Associated Press published a photo of FARDC troops in a tank in front of Bemba’s residence in Kinshasa—refuting the Gentlemen dismissal of heavy weapons. Gettlemen’s long feature in the New York Times filled about 45 column inches, on several pages, with numerous photos of poor people in the bush, and it deflected attention from the conflict in Kinshasa.

Weapons deliveries rolled into Kinshasa from Matadi port between August and October 2006 and the four-day war involved mortars, bombs, tanks and RPG-7 rockets. Some twenty T-55 battle tanks, armored vehicles, and tons of ammunition arrived in Matadi in July 2006, shipped from Europe. There were twenty newly arrived T-72 tanks at Matadi. On August 24-25, FARDC moved seven truckloads of ammunition to Kinshasa. Nine T-55 battle tanks were delivered during the night of September 12. The FARDC logistics base in Kinshasa stored at least twelve T-55 tanks and 20 infantry combat vehicles.(13) The Kabila government and FARDC command did not cooperate with MONUC in verifications or inspections and weapons deliveries to FARDC violated U. N. Security Council resolutions.(14)

In mid-March, Bemba’s fighting force in Kinshasa was estimated at 600-1000 soldiers, not counting kidogo—child soldiers tasked with looting shops and businesses—and they were decisively outnumbered. Some two thousand tons of weapons were captured at Bemba’s compounds in the northern cities of Gbadolite and Gemena, along with a big ammunition depot near Bemba’s house in Kinshasa. Bemba abused and neglected his troops, creating a force of desperate and angry men authorized to rape and plunder.

Both sides were heavily armed but the proliferation of arms, weaponry and landmines has rarely been explored by the international media, and the Gettlemen feature continued the tradition of misrepresenting reality. The media generally spotlights cannibalism and tribalism in Congo, and T-55 battle tanks, helicopter gunships or C-130 transport planes brokered through international criminal arms syndicates don’t fit the tribal mold.

THE MONUC PARALYSIS The fighting began March 22 outside Jean-Pierre Bemba’s compound. Sources loyal to Kabila claim that Bemba’s soldiers attacked a jeep carrying government troops. Bemba’s troops allegedly fired an RPG-7 rocket, completely destroyed the jeep, and killed seven FARDC troops and officers.

According to several sources, Bemba’s forces captured two MONUC armored personnel carriers after "frightened" Uruguayan soldiers stationed outside the Bemba residence abandoned the combat vehicles. It may be that MONUC troops were ordered to abandon their position, if fighting occurred, due to Kabila’s request to Swing. But Bemba troops didn’t get far because troop carriers were low on fuel.

According to Kabila supporters, Kabila reportedly sent some 2000 forces of his elite Republican Guard to encircle, attack and "clean up" positions held by Bemba’s troops. One Congolese human rights worker was outside Bemba’s residence at 9:47 AM on March 22 when some Bemba’s soldiers who knew him told him "Guns have no friends: leave now." The eyewitness went to the Boulevard 24 Novembre where he saw FARDC troops carrying fully armed RPG-7 rocket launchers. He claims Bemba’s troops at the time had AK-47’s but no RPG-7’s, which contradicts Western press reports indicating that Bemba’s troops attacked first, and with RPG-7’s. When he saw Bemba’s troops doing a "war dance" he knew that there was going to be fighting. On the Avenue de la Justice he saw more Bemba troops "obviously preparing to fight." He heard the shooting begin about 11:00 AM.

At 11:30 AM, MONUC security advised all personnel at MONUC Headquarters to stay inside and all other MONUC personnel to stay where they were. For the rest of Thursday March 22, MONUC rounded up and evacuated civilians to safer locations; personnel whose lodgings were in high-risk areas were moved during the night.

Some MONUC civilians who took security seriously and moved to hotels in October 2006 incurred exorbitant unrecovered expenses in addition to rents paid for private, long-term lodgings. Thus, in the middle of the night on March 22, some MONUC staff refused to comply with last minute and haphazard evacuations, knowing that both personal security and personal finances might suffer in the deal.

On Friday, March 23, it was total war in Kinshasa. Eyewitnesses report that Kabila’s crack Presidential Guard was killing innocent civilians who were on the streets because they wanted to eliminate all Bemba supporters. After March 24 some of Bemba’s soldiers, fearing capture or death, gave up their clothes and weapons to civilians to protect themselves. Civilians grabbed these out of pride for the Bemba cause, but it transformed them into sitting ducks, as the Bemba soldiers expected, and these armed civilians were reportedly massacred.

Many of Bemba’s soldiers had rejected the internationally brokered demobilization ordered by the government and supported by "humanitarian" organizations, fearing—with good reason—they would be selectively killed. According to one Kinshasa witness, on March 24 and 25 many of Bemba’s surviving civilian supporters were arrested: more than 30 women were rounded up and jailed because they were "the women of Bemba’s soldiers." As of July 27 some 168 Bemba soldiers were being held by MONUC troops at Kingabua (Kinshasa), along with 97 women and 57 children.

Shooting continued throughout the nights of March 22 through 26. Eyewitnesses report trucks and soldiers hauling off dead bodies—soldiers and civilians—and dumping them in mass graves at the Mikonga Cemetery near the N’djili airport. People living near Mikonga Cemetery saw trucks go by loaded with bodies and return empty. Eyewitness also saw bodies being dumped in the Congo River. At least 121 of Bemba’s soldiers fled the lost war by crossing the Congo River to Congo-Brazzaville, but many of Bemba’s troops were reportedly shot trying to escape by boat and their bodies thrown in the river.(15)

Many innocent civilians were killed and people in Kinshasa know their names. Dead bodies were moved and dumped elsewhere so that bodies would be seen, identified and counted. One wealthy moneychanger was killed in the Gombe section of Kinshasa and the body was dumped in front of MONUC. The man was loved and respected and there was a huge street celebration in his honor in early April. The dead bodies of others, like 39 year-old Charlotte Yaribu, another moneychanger shot going to a store, were identified but soldiers quickly took and dumped them in mass graves. Hundreds of people simply disappeared.

The battle in the city center was reported somewhat, but the big FARDC battle with a sizeable Bemba contingent in Maluku, some 80 kilometers from Kinshasa, was not. MONUC and the media ignored it: officially, it never happened.

"There were armored vehicles, cannon, machine guns—the fighting in Maluku was very bad," reported one Congolese human rights researcher who was unable to get there due to insecurity. He claimed that fighting was ongoing as late as April 5. "No one has talked about this at all. It was not in the center of town. Bemba was constructing a house there. Many, many people were killed there. No one has reported on it."

There were also uncountable cases of arbitrary arrest, and these were ongoing until at least April 5. People described random detentions on the street followed by quick searches for money. "It was the same under Mobutu," said one traumatized victim who was robbed of the little money he had.

On March 27 Reuters repeated European Union ambassadors’ claims of "more than 200 people killed" in clashes that "continued for two days," and it cited the German Ambassador offering "clear indications from hospitals and morgues" of 200 to 600 deaths. On March 30 Reuters reported that Bemba would fly to Portugal as a "tourist" seeking medical treatment, the accusation of treason against Bemba by the DRC government, and that Bemba was hiding in the South African embassy in Kinshasa.(16)

But by April 1 news sources were universally downplaying the scale and nature of atrocities, and none addressed the international scandal behind the conflict. Agence France Press reported "at least 163 people killed."(17) Voice of America offered a total whitewash with no accountings of dead.(18) The South African Press Agency reported that Bemba "sought refuge in the South African embassy 17 days ago," meaning prior to March 15, turning "old news" into older news.(19) Kenya’s The Nation, a western intelligence monitored state newspaper, reported (April 6) some 250 to 500 killed and 500 injured.(20) On April 13, Africa Confidential, the British intelligence newsletter, vetted U.N. reports of "several hundred" dead. Notably, AC confirmed that Angolan troops were in Kinshasa during the March war.(21)

THE SAVIMBI SOLUTION

Among the dead bodies that turned up in the morgue after the "short but brutal war" in March 2007 were battle-hardened soldiers who once fought alongside Jonas Savimbi. Hundreds of bodies filled the morgue but many were not claimed, indicating that the dead were outsiders whose families would not be coming. Some 20 troops who surrendered were also reported to be former UNITA.

South African special forces were in Kinshasa at the time, and South Africa negotiated with DRC for Bemba’s safe departure from Congo; Bemba’s ties to South Africa run deep and silent. To understand why MONUC and the "international community" did not take action to prevent the March war in Kinshasa—even after the history of belligerence and atrocities by both Bemba and Kabila’s forces—we can find some clues in the example of Jonas Savimbi in Angola.

Savimbi was the leader of the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), a Reagan–era rebel front that fought against "communist" Angola with U.S., U.K. and Israeli backing. By the late 1990’s UNITA was out of favor: new oil and diamond deals, increasing U.S. investments in Angola, mercenary friends of Bill Clinton, all played a role.(22)

After Savimbi refused the vice-presidency in President Dos Santos’ government in Angola the order went out to assassinate him. Israeli Special Forces, with Pentagon support, flew to Angola to track and kill Savimbi. They reportedly pinpointed Savimbi’s position with satellite technology, and he was reportedly assassinated soon after the Clinton Administration and its partners gave the orders.(23)

"They got tired of Savimbi, and they find him and kill him," said one Kabila insider. "When the international powers want Savimbi killed—it’s easy. This is what finally happened with Bemba. They were tired of him interfering in their plans. Mining in this country is an international scandal, and Bemba was disturbing the new democracy and getting in the way of exploitation and profits."

"I would never believe that Kabila would take such action if he did not have the green light from important people outside," said one insider close to Kabila and the secrets of the Kabila Government. "It is clear that this was a "cleaning" of Bemba’s men by Kabila’s forces and that some powerful people from the U.S. and U.K., Israel, Belgium and Australia—Kabila’s supporters—wanted it to happen." One government parliamentarian close to Bemba agreed.

MONUC allowed surrendering Bemba troops to take refuge at MONUC camps. MONUC also transferred Bemba from the South African Embassy to the N’djili airport under heavy guard in a convoy of fifteen U.N. Armed Personnel Carriers under cover of night. On April 13, 2007 Bemba flew out of Kinshasa on his private Boeing 727 with his wife and five children. His plane arrived at the airport of Portugal's southern tourist city of Faro and police escorted him to a luxury villa in the southern Algarve resort of Quinta do Lago. People interpret MONUC’s assistance in evacuating Bemba as evidence of MONUC’s support for Bemba.

Tensions between Kabila and MONUC have flared since the March events. Kabila and Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame recently took high moral stances after allegations that MONUC troops traded gun for gold, but bloodshed and plunder in Central Africa has their names all over it.

According to MONUC spokesman Kemal Saiki, weapons captured from the Bemba camp were turned over to the Congolese government forces. Saiki also confirmed that many of Bemba’s soldiers surrendered to MONUC for their own protection. "We are assisting them to get legal protection and assistance," Saiki said. "There were too many arms that were held by Bemba."(24)

"Bemba will not be arrested," said one Bemba supporter and parliamentarian who worked for Bemba’s MLC rebellion during the war. "There are soldiers behind Bemba—Nkunda and Ruberwa. Did Kabila have authorization to move soldiers for this small war? No. When the leadership drops the opposition then you have dictatorship." Asked about Bemba’s exile in Portugal, he said: "As Jean-Pierre Bemba is the opposition he must come back. It’s not finished yet. Now is not the time to use guns. It’s time for reason and spirit."(25)

To gain perspective on the MONUC position, we can compare the MONUC reaction to the March violence in Kinshasa with other recent violence in Congo. On the night of May 26, 2007, some ten to twelve "militiamen" allegedly massacred 18 villagers in South Kivu. Only two days later MONUC issued a communiqué that used very strong language of condemnation. "The U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in the DRC, MONUC, strongly and unequivocally condemns this horrible massacre of innocent civilians." MONUC "calls on the Congolese authorities to use all necessary means so that those responsible for these heinous crimes are pursued, and brought to justice."(26)

European Union officials expressed "indignation" on March 27—but this must be tempered by their involvement in plunder and profit behind the scenes. MONUC did not at any time, it appears, issue any communiqué like the one issued about massacres in South Kivu. MONUC’s actions and inactions during the conflict, including logistical support—trucks allegedly dumping bodies in mass graves—raises important questions. MONUC’s role in the death of civilians in Matadi earlier in 2007 raises similar questions. MONUC spokesman Kemal Saiki said that MONUC troops "shot over the heads" of a mob, when in fact others establish that MONUC troops shot into the crowd.

"MONUC is not honest, they don’t care about people," said one disillusioned MONUC civilian employee in Kinshasa. "They are talking about human rights and they are the first organization to violate the rights of the Congolese people."

Events of March 22-27 in DRC demand that an independent International Commission of Inquiry be established to investigate the charges of high-level bribery, corruption and possible extortion within the United Nations Observers Mission for the Democratic Republic of Congo. Alleged violations of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions demand an investigation of all parties, MONUC included, their actions and inactions during recent events in Congo.

About the Author: Visit Keith Harmon Snow’s website.

Notes:

1. See Dr. David Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crises, University of Chicago Press, 1991.

2. See: keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, "Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception Over Those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire," Z Magazine, June 1 and July 1, 2007.

3. See: keith harmon snow and David Barouski: "Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in Congo," Z MAgazine July 2006.

4. All names are fictitious, though the sources are real people: anyone identified in this story would be subject to persecution.

5. Kidogo are children armed and sent into battle, in advance of the battle-hardened troops, to draw fire and take the brunt of immediate killing.

6. Private communication, MONUC spokesperson Kemal Saiki, Kinshasa, DRC, April 4, 2007.

7. Private communication, MONUC official, May 8, 2007.

8. Oscar Kashala and his security team were arrested in Kinshasa and charged with being mercenaries in an alleged coup plot. See: "Congo Holding Three Americans in Alleged Coup Plot," May 25 2006, .

9. Private interview with Oscar Kashala, keith harmon snow, Kinshasa, DRC, August 10, 2007.

10. See Zaire: Repression as Policy, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 1990. In 1990 Mobutu’s crack Israeli-trained troops of the Special Presidential Division (DSP) attacked the campus at the University of Lumumbashi, and thousands of students were killed, with countless more tortured and brutalized. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency station in Lumumbashi supported the atrocities and cover-up.

11. These include John Darnton, Steven Greenhouse, Keith Richburg, Paul Lewis, Lynne Duke, James Ruppert, Kenneth Noble, Raymond Bonner, Joshua Hammer, James C. McKinley Jr. and Howard W. French. See: keith harmon snow, "Zaire Cracks, and the Media Fights Mobutu’s War," ; also: Keith B. Richburg, Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, Basic Books, 1997.

12. The source alleges that pay-offs have occurred regularly.

13. "Mortars shake Congo capital, Govt. seeks Bemba arrest," Reuters, 23 Mar 2007

14. Twenty-second report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, S2006/759, 21 September 2006.

15. According to a U.N. Security Council report of September 21, 2006, "Pursuant to Security Council resolution 1596 (2005) of 18 April, MONUC inspected a shipment of military equipment and related materials, including tanks, armored personnel vehicles and ammunition, at the Matadi port on 29 July. The Government had neither informed the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004) prior to the arrival of the cargo, nor invited the Mission to verify the type and quantity of military material, in violation of the resolution."

16. "CONGO-DRC: Refugees from Kinshasa to be repatriated," IRIN, 7 May 2007.

17. "Portugal accepts Bemba but not for exile," Reuters, 30 March 2007.

18. "DRC's Bemba set for Portugal," Agence France Presse, 1 April 2007.

19. Kari Barber, "DRC Opposition Leader Awaits Approval for Medical Evacuation," Voice of America, Dakar April 1, 2007.

20. "Kabila 'okays' Bemba's visit to Portugal," Sapa/Ap, 1 April 2007.

21. Juacali Kambale, Congo DRC: Kabila Wins Round Three, but Bemba Not Finished Yet," The Nation, Nairobi, 6 April 2007.

22. "The Bashing of Bemba," Africa Confidential, Vol. 48, No. 8, 13 April 2007.

23. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999: p. 64.

24. Ibid.

25. Private interview, Kemal Saiki, MONUC Headquarters, Kinshasa, 4 April 2007.

26. Private interview, Kinshasa, April 6, 2007.

Dan Gertler earns billions as mine deals fail to enrich Congo

Dan Gertler earns billions as mine deals fail to enrich Congo By Franz Wild, Michael J. Kavanagh and Jonathan Ferziger, Published: December 29, 2012

Dan Gertler’s bearded face lights up as he looks out the helicopter window. Below, an installation rises from a clearing in the central African forest, where it transforms ore mined from the ochre earth into sheets of copper.

“Look at it, look at it,” the Israeli billionaire, 38, shouts through the headset. “This is what life is all about,” Gertler says as the chopper lands in the scorching afternoon heat of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “Everyone comes with dreams and illusions and promises. Everyone wants quick deals. They don’t want to invest. We are real.”

Gertler hops out into the dust of Mutanda, a mine controlled by his partner, Glencore International, that holds cobalt and some of the highest-grade copper in the world. He climbs into a Toyota Land Cruiser to tour the mine, tapping messages into one of three BlackBerrys, whose batteries, like those of most smartphones and laptops, often depend on cobalt to keep their charge.

Gertler has stakes in companies that control 9.6 percent of world cobalt production. That’s just the beginning of his influence in Congo, the largest country of sub-Saharan Africa, with the world’s richest deposits of cobalt and major reserves of copper, diamonds, gold, tin and coltan, an ore containing the metal tantalum that is used in consumer electronics. His Gibraltar-registered Fleurette Properties owns stakes in various Congolese mines through at least 60 holding companies in offshore tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands.

Gertler, whose grandfather co-founded Israel’s diamond exchange in 1947, arrived in Congo in 1997 seeking rough diamonds. The 23-year-old trader struck a friendship with Joseph Kabila, who then headed the Congolese army and today is the nation’s president. Since those early days, Gertler has invested in iron ore, gold, cobalt and copper as well as agriculture, oil and banking. In the process, he’s built a net worth of at least $2.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Roster of critics

He’s also acquired a roster of critics. Many of the government’s deals with Gertler deprive Congo’s 68 million people of badly needed funds, according to the London-based anticorruption group Global Witness and lawmakers from Congo and Britain, the country’s second-biggest aid donor after the United States.

“Dan Gertler is essentially looting Congo at the expense of its people,” said Jean Pierre Muteba, the head of a group of nongovernmental organizations that monitor the mining sector in Katanga province, with most of Congo’s copper. “He has political connections, so state companies sell him mines for low prices and he sells them on for huge profits. That’s how he’s become a billionaire.”

In the eight months preceding the November 2011 elections, in which Kabila won a second five-year term, companies affiliated with Gertler bought shares in five mining ventures from three state-owned firms, according to minutes of board meetings, company filings and documents published later. The state companies didn’t announce the sales.

In some cases, prices paid were below valuations of the projects made by analysts at Deutsche Bank, Numis Securities and Oriel Securities. Gertler said he did not buy companies at below-market rates or engage in kickbacks.

“The lies are screaming to the heavens,” he said in his native Hebrew during three days Bloomberg reporters spent with him in Congo and Israel. He returns home to Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox suburb of Tel Aviv, each week to spend the Sabbath with his wife, Anat, and nine children.

Congo has a history of making deals out of the public view. The International Monetary Fund has halted a $532 million loan program with the country. It said the government didn’t adhere to its demand to publish the full details of a 2011 mining deal between a state-owned miner and a company that reportedly is affiliated with Gertler. Congo will lose out on three loan disbursements worth about $225 million, according to Oscar Melhado, the IMF’s resident representative in Congo.

As the country’s mineral wealth is developed, the lot of Congo’s people isn’t improving. Congo remains the world’s most destitute nation, according to the U.N. Development Programme. Most of the country lives without electricity or running water, and one in five children dies before his or her fifth birthday.

Kabila’s reelection was marred by irregularities, according to observers. Kabila’s opponent, Etienne Tshisekedi, contested the 49 to32 percent vote, charging it was fraudulent. The Congolese Supreme Court ruled it valid.

Global Witness has called on Glencore and FTSE 100 Index-listed Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. (ENRC), two companies involved in the pre-election deals with Gertler, to publish details of the transactions and dispel the anti-corruption group’s suspicions that Congolese officials received kickbacks for selling assets to Gertler.

“Offering, paying, authorizing, soliciting or accepting bribes is unacceptable to Glencore,” spokesman Charles Watenphul said. The ENRC declined to comment.

Gertler said disclosing the deals to the public is the Congolese government’s responsibility. “We’re a private company. Why should we announce?” he said.

“I should get a Nobel Prize,” added Gertler, who paced and waved his arms as his demeanor swung between anger and charm. “They need people like us, who come and put billions in the ground. Without this, the resources are worth nothing.”

‘Braved the hurricane’

The government insists it’s following the rules of the IMF agreement, which calls for it to disclose deals for its natural resources. And Kabila, 41, defends Gertler as a man who staked his fortune on Congo at a time when the country was wracked by war and desperate for cash.

[Vehmegricht: how utterly convenient for Gertler!]

“The truth is, during our very difficult times, there were investors who came and left and others who braved the hurricane,” he said of Gertler at his riverside palace in December 2011. “He’s one of those.”

The bond between the two men is so strong that Kabila at times uses Gertler as a special diplomatic envoy, including in 2002, when the Israeli businessman met with then-U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to ask for help ending Congo’s war with its neighbors.

Diamonds have been a backdrop to Gertler’s life since his childhood in affluent northern Tel Aviv, where he had a secular upbringing. His mother ran a pop-music radio station, and his father was a goalkeeper for Maccabi Tel Aviv, a top-division pro soccer team, before becoming a diamond dealer.

As a youth, Gertler got up at 5 a.m. to learn how to polish gems before heading to school. He joined his grandfather, Romanian emigre Moshe Schnitzer, at business meetings to watch him negotiate diamond deals. When Schnitzer died in 2007, Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel’s prime minister, gave a eulogy.

Gertler recalled a business lesson his grandfather imparted: “He told me: ‘Dan, you meet your bankers and you ask for credit only when you don’t need it. Just to secure it. Because when you need it, it is too late.’ ”

Gertler said he started buying rough diamonds at age 22, so he could work with larger volumes. Gertler flew between war-torn nations such as Liberia and Angola and the major diamond centers in the United States, India and Israel, buying and selling gems, he said.

“From the beginning, he went his own way,” says his uncle, Shmuel Schnitzer, 63, former president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses.“The guy has guts.”

Gertler broke with his family’s secular tradition when he and Anat decided to adopt an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle. They’ve banned television and computers from their five-story, terraced house. In Congo, he supports the Chabad-Lubavitch center, which provides religious and educational services to Jews throughout Africa.

Gertler’s love affair with Congo began in 1997, when the country was one of the world’s top five producers of diamonds. That May, insurgents led by Laurent Kabila, the father of the current president, overthrew the corrupt regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, a U.S. ally who had ruled for 32 years. After taking Kinshasa on May 17, Laurent Kabila declared himself president and renamed the country Democratic Republic of Congo.

A few days later, Shlomo Bentolila, chief rabbi of Kinshasa’s Chabad-Lubavitch center, arranged for the young diamond merchant to meet Kabila’s son Joseph, the new army chief, at the InterContinental hotel, Gertler said.

The two clicked, he recalled. Both carried a heavy responsibility: Kabila was the commander of thousands of troops, and Gertler was trading $2 billion of diamonds annually, he said. One day, Kabila suggested that Gertler meet the president. Laurent needed money to fight his war and offered Gertler a monopoly on Congo’s diamond sales, he said. Kabila asked for $20 million in cash. Gertler agreed.

He was back in Israel celebrating the deal when the Congolese president called. He needed the money immediately. Using a mix of bank credit, inheritance, cash reserves and liquidated stocks, Gertler said he scraped together the payment and sent it to the Swiss account of Congo’s central bank. Gertler had bet his fortune on a president at war.

The risks became evident in January 2001, when a bodyguard shot Laurent Kabila dead and his son took power.

Role as envoy

The young president needed friends: When he took over, vast swaths of the country were under the control of rebel factions backed by Uganda and Rwanda.

Kabila asked Gertler to help woo U.S. support to bolster his position as leader and start peace talks with his neighbors.

In April 2002, Gertler said, he secretly shuttled between Washington, Kinshasa and Kigali, Rwanda, relaying letters between Kabila and Rice. Jendayi Frazer, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, said Gertler’s intervention was instrumental to talks that resulted in a peace accord. “He was serious and credible,” Frazer said.

By the time the peace deal was signed between the government and rebel factions in 2002, millions had died in Congo.

Gertler won back a near monopoly of Congo’s diamond trade. One of his companies, Emaxon Finance International, paid $15 million in cash and loans to the country’s state-owned diamond miner, known as MIBA, for a four- year contract to sell 88 percent of its production. Congo was desperate for investment, Frazer said. “It’s not like he crowded out a lot of other investors,” she said. “There weren’t many.”

Kabila, who had formed a government in which former rebel chiefs were cabinet ministers as part of the peace deal, tried to kick-start Congo’s economy. The ministers signed deals to exploit the country’s natural resources with foreign companies, many of them at prices that undervalued the assets, the World Bank said.

In 2006, Kabila’s People’s Party for Reconstruction and Development, with a platform of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, was elected in Congo’s first free elections in four decades. The backroom deals continued, said Peter Rosenblum, a professor of law at Columbia University who headed the Carter Center’s mission to observe the mining review. “What happened in 2008 and 2009 really proved that the Gertlers of the world would win by doing business the way they’d been doing it all along,” Rosenblum said. Today, Transparency International ranks only a dozen countries below Congo in its Corruption Perceptions Index.

As Kabila cemented his hold on power, Gertler expanded beyond diamonds into mining of other minerals and metals.

Charm and aggression

Six mining executives who have done business with Gertler say he mixes charm and aggressiveness to make deals. During negotiations, which are often in French — a language Gertler only partially understands — he will hunch over his BlackBerry, seemingly oblivious to the debate, said Pieter Deboutte, the Belgian who runs Gertler’s business in Congo. Then, suddenly, he’ll catch everyone off guard by interjecting, “Stop, wait a bit!” and launch into a list of orders in English to his staff.

Gertler’s dealings can be wildly profitable. In one case, he earned a 500 percent return in six months without risking a single penny as the middleman in a deal for SMKK, which owns a copper and cobalt deposit in the heart of Katanga’s richest mining zone.

Gertler said it’s not his fault if the government didn’t get a good price for its SMKK holding. “That is what we know how to do better than anyone else: We know how to maximize value for our projects,” he said. “If the government would like to hire my services to maximize value for their stake, they should approach me. No problem.”

Copper is what attracts most miners to Congo, with one of the world’s biggest reserves, Gertler said. The metal traded at $7,991 a ton in London on Dec. 5, more than double its price on Jan. 5, 2009.

In June 2010 and March 2011, state-owned miner Sodimico sold more than 30 mining licenses, including those for two copper projects, to Gertler-linked companies for a total of $60 million. The two projects were estimated to be worth $1.6 billion, though their valuations included ore-processing plants and the licenses.

Laurent chief executive Lambert Tshisola Kangoa, said the mines ministry demanded Sodimico give $10 million to the country’s general election fund.

“It was not an economic decision by Sodimico,” he said of the sale. Gertler’s joint venture relinquished the rights to the biggest of the mines, Frontier, according to the mines ministry. In July 2012, Congo sold the ENRC the license for Frontier, which in 2009 had been the country’s biggest taxpayer, for $101.5 million.

“When you see similar things with slightly different variations happening again and again, you have to stop and think, ‘Obviously something is going wrong,’ ” said Daniel Balint-Kurti, chief researcher at Congo for Global Witness.

At the Mutanda project, too, Gertler paid far less for his 20 percent than his partner, Glencore International, paid for similar assets. Glencore’s outside consulting firm valued the entire mine at about $3 billion. Based on net present value calculations using figures from Glencore’s May 2011 prospectus, Gertler’s stake, including royalties and other payments, was worth $849 million at the time.

One of Gertler’s British Virgin Islands-based companies bought the stake from Gecamines for $120 million in March 2011, according to a copy of the contract. About a year later, in May 2012, Glencore paid $340 million, plus $140 million in assumed debt, for 20 percent of the mine, increasing its holding to 60 percent. Gertler says Glencore’s 20 percent purchase was worth more than his because it gave them control of the company.

Gertler said he will stick by Congo. “I took a decision that I wanted to be a long-term player in Congo,” he said. “At the end of the day, yes, I’m looking to create a lot of wealth.”

Gertler dismissed critics who say he’s amassed a fortune at the expense of the world’s poorest people. “Our deals and performance speak for themselves,” he said. “And whoever doesn’t feel comfortable investing with us will not.”

— Bloomberg Markets