Summary executions, torture and mortar bombs exploded in the mouths of captured fighters were among the horrors described to a Zimbabwe court that officially declared dead 47 soldiers who disappeared in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) savage five-year war.
The hearing on Thursday in the Harare Magistrate’s Court, a necessary step before the victims’ families can claim state benefits, offered rare and graphic insight into the fighting that claimed an estimated three-million lives — most through war-induced hunger and disease.
Zimbabwe has long been criticised for sending 11 000 troops to fight alongside Congolese government forces against rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda when the war started in 1998.
President Robert Mugabe likened the operation to helping a neighbour whose house was on fire.
His opponents claimed senior military and ruling party officials were more interested in exploiting the DRC’s vast mineral riches.
They said the costly deployment in distant central Africa contributed to Zimbabwe’s spiraling economic decline.
Congolese rebels claimed to have killed hundreds of Zimbabwean troops before the country withdrew in 2002. But the Zimbabwe defence ministry has repeatedly refused to divulge details of its casualties.
Court records of the hearing convened under Zimbabwe’s missing persons law identified 47 soldiers whose remains were never returned home. Many more remain unaccounted for.
Only fragments remained of some of those identified Thursday. Others could not be retrieved because of heavy fighting, military commanders testified.
Fellow soldiers saw some of them beaten, tortured and executed, as they retreated.
Two were killed by ramming mortar bombs down their throats and exploding them, according to testimony. Another was found decapitated, dismembered, his genitals severed and his torso torched.
Others were abandoned in the thick of battle. An evacuation helicopter was forced to leave five of them behind when it came under rebel fire, or risk being shot down, court records showed.
The missing also included two suicides. Military officers reported ”trauma” among some of their troops, saying ”sometimes men get deranged” after close-quarter combat and high casualties, the records said.
Officials at the defence ministry were not available to comment on Friday on the testimony.
In the past, they have acknowledged that without morgue facilities officers were obliged to bury some casualties in the bush in remote parts of the vast central African country.
The government has promised to try to bring their remains home for traditional burials as demanded by customary beliefs.
Under a colonial-era law, families of the missing cannot claim pensions and other state benefits until a court formally declares their relatives dead.
The DRC’s war drew in the armies of half a dozen African nations.
A 2002 peace deal brokered in South Africa paved the way for a transitional government which took office in July 2003, bringing former rebel leaders to the capital to take up posts in a power-sharing government. – Sapa-AP