A CRIME syndicate of Sudanese businessmen and tribal warlords is behind big-time poaching and atrocities against local people in the Central African Republic, says an official enquiry. Investigators found that the poachers were responsible for “savage destruction” in the Bangassou forest, a region covering 1.6m hectares. Poachers are not only carrying out “wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of large mammals and small game” in the neighbouring country, but also atrocities against people living in the forest, it said. – AFP