OWN CORRESPONDENTS, New York | Friday
INVESTIGATORS from the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity say they are convinced that Togolese security forces murdered, tortured and raped hundreds of people after a 1998 presidential election.
The wrongdoing in the West African nation ”would include, in addition to extra-judicial, summary and arbitrary executions, torture and mistreatment inflicted on prisoners as well as rapes and kidnappings of women carried out in some regions,” a report by a joint U.N.-OAU commission of inquiry said.
The carefully-worded report is likely to prove an embarrassment for Togo’s leader Gnassingbe Eyadema, who is currently president of the OAU, although his government said the report contained no evidence to support the allegations.
The commission was created in June 2000 after the London-based Amnesty International said several hundreds of people had been killed by Togolese security forces and their bodies thrown into the sea.
The commission reported the killings happened following the June 1998 re-election of President Eyadema, in power since a bloodless coup in 1967 propelled him to the presidency of the tiny nation. The 1998 election result was widely questioned by opposition parties and foreign monitors. When the results were announced, people took to the streets in protest after which hundreds were killed by security forces, Amnesty said.
The commission said it had had neither sufficient time nor means to determine the precise number of bodies found in the water by fishermen after the 1998 elections. Nor had it been able to confirm that bodies had been dropped from aircraft, as had been reported.
The commission called on the UN and the OAU to create teams of experts to continue with the inquiry, and said it fell to the Togolese government to appoint a panel of judges to investigate the facts and take legal action against those responsible.
”Many apparent factors seem to indicate (the killings) were carried out by individuals linked to the security forces, the police and militias working in coordination with them,” the report said.
Togo’s Prime Minister Gabriel Massen Agbeyome Kodjo, who the report said apparently supported and encouraged militias accused of raping peasant women in front of their husbands, said there was no evidence to support Amnesty’s accusations. – AFP/Reuters