Lawyer blames Ugandan rebels for slaughter
The lawyer of a Swedish company boss jailed in Central African Republic with 10 others on suspicion of murder on Tuesday said the real killers were rebels of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army.
The man, who heads the big game Central African Wildlife Adventures company, and 10 of his employees were charged with murder on May 10, after 13 miners were found dead in March at Ngungunza in the northeast of the country.
"The real killers are elements of the LRA," lawyer Mathias-Barthelemy Morouba told AFP.
"The victims were bound with bicycle tyres carefully cut up into ropes, then they were beaten with sticks until they died.
"The murderers also used daggers and machetes, because the rear part of the skull of some victims has been cracked open with a machete. Nowhere in this country do we see massacres of this kind," he added.
Ngungunza is in an area "infested with 'Tongo-Tongo' (LRA rebels). So we cannot say that Erik Mararv, who contacted the police, (and) who brought to the site the Central African armed forces armed to the teeth, is the one who killed these 13 people. All the same, he makes a funny killer," Morouba said.
A member of the paramilitary police, who asked not to be named, told AFP that the Sweden and the other 10 suspects, some of them foreigners, were being held in Bangui's central Ngaragba prison.
Chased out of Uganda, the head of the LRA, Joseph Kony is believed to be in the Central African Republic with several hundred men, according to the United Nations in late March.
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The man, who heads the big game Central African Wildlife Adventures company, and 10 of his employees were charged with murder on May 10, after 13 miners were found dead in March at Ngungunza in the northeast of the country.
"The real killers are elements of the LRA," lawyer Mathias-Barthelemy Morouba told AFP.
"The victims were bound with bicycle tyres carefully cut up into ropes, then they were beaten with sticks until they died.
"The murderers also used daggers and machetes, because the rear part of the skull of some victims has been cracked open with a machete. Nowhere in this country do we see massacres of this kind," he added.
Ngungunza is in an area "infested with 'Tongo-Tongo' (LRA rebels). So we cannot say that Erik Mararv, who contacted the police, (and) who brought to the site the Central African armed forces armed to the teeth, is the one who killed these 13 people. All the same, he makes a funny killer," Morouba said.
A member of the paramilitary police, who asked not to be named, told AFP that the Sweden and the other 10 suspects, some of them foreigners, were being held in Bangui's central Ngaragba prison.
Chased out of Uganda, the head of the LRA, Joseph Kony is believed to be in the Central African Republic with several hundred men, according to the United Nations in late March.
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