Six suspected members of a Ugandan rebel group went before a Congolese military court on Saturday accused of taking part in the killing last weekend of 51 people, the latest in a string of massacres in the restive east of the country. The gruesome slaying in the town of Beni touched off mass street protests against the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo for failing to protect the population from the armed rebel groups that plague the region. Clashes erupted at Wednesday's protest march leaving three people including a policeman dead.
The men accused in the slaughter are "two Ugandans, one Tanzanian and three Congolese," said colonel Jean-Paulin Esosa, who presides over the operational military court of North Kivu province. Appearing at the public hearing in blue and yellow prison shirts, they were charged with "participation in an insurrectional movement, crimes against humanity for murder and terrorism," Esosa said.
The accused admitted at the hearing to having been "at the service of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF)", a partly Islamist armed group of Ugandan origin, an AFP correspondent reported. Hundreds of Beni residents had gathered to attend the hearing. One survivor of the brutal attack, Eve Kahambu, told AFP she wanted to see the "murderers" receive "the severest punishment".
The ADF has been present in DR Congo for more than two decades and is accused of a litany of human rights abuses and being involved with criminal networks funded by kidnappings, smuggling and logging. The mass killing last weekend was only the latest of the attacks in the region around Beni that have claimed more than 700 lives since 2014. The government has blamed them on the ADF, but a report published in March by the Congo Research Group at New York University, which probed these massacres, claimed that soldiers from the regular army had also participated in the killings.