Mundos told Reuters on Saturday that the accusations against him
were false and the killings had continued after he left the operation.
South
African peacekeepers patrol the streets of Goma in eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo, December 2, 2015.
A Congolese general recruited,
financed and armed elements of a Ugandan Islamist group to kill
civilians while he was in charge of a military operation targeting the
rebels, according to a confidential report to the United Nations
Security Council.
A panel of U.N. experts, who
monitor sanctions on Democratic Republic of Congo, said "it has become
clear that FARDC (Congolese army) officers were involved in recruiting
and supplying armed groups involved in the killings (of civilians)."
More
than 500 people have died in a wave of attacks in eastern Congo since
October 2014, rights groups say. The Congolese government has blamed
most of those on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Brigadier General Muhindo Akili Mundos was
in charge of the offensive against the ADF - named Sukola, or "cleanup"
in the local Lingala language - between August 2014 and June 2015.
"The
Group knows of eight individuals that were approached in 2014 by
General Mundos to participate in the killings," the experts wrote in the
report, seen by Reuters.
Three members of the
ADF-Mwalika, a splinter group of the core ADF, told the experts that
before the killings began Mundos had persuaded elements of their group
to merge with other recruits.
"According to them,
General Mundos financed and equipped this group with weapons, ammunition
and FARDC uniforms. He came to their camp several times, sometimes
wearing an FARDC uniform and sometimes in civilian clothes," the experts
said.
"Although it is unclear if they knew what
the objective was initially, these three ADF-Mwalika elements were
eventually given the order to kill civilians," they said.
Mundos
told Reuters on Saturday that the accusations against him were false
and the killings had continued after he left the operation.
The
U.N. report also contains accusations of links between other Congolese
army officers and the ADF. The Congolese army and the Congolese
government did not immediately respond to requests for comment on
Saturday.
The U.N. experts said that while the
number of killings had decreased since Mundos was transferred from the
Sukola operation in June 2015, "the killings of civilians have continued
by armed elements throughout 2015 and early 2016."
In
March, Jason Stearns, a former coordinator of the U.N. panel of experts
who now heads the Congo Research Group at New York University, accused
Congolese soldiers of taking part in at least three deadly attacks on
civilians.
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