Bodies of 2 Missing U.N. Experts Are Said to Have Been Found in Congo
By REUTERSMARCH 28, 2017
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Two United Nations investigators
and their interpreter who disappeared in the Democratic Republic of Congo this month are among the bodies discovered in a shallow grave by villagers, a government spokesman said on Tuesday.
The militants pose an increasingly serious threat to the rule of President Joseph Kabila, whose decision to stay on beyond the end
of his elected mandate last December has sent ripples of unrest across the country, a vast mining powerhouse of Central Africa.
The missing investigators, Michael Sharp, an American,
and Zaida Catalan, a Swede, were members of a group of experts monitoring enforcement of sanctions imposed on the country by the United Nations Security Council when they disappeared in an area engulfed by a violent uprising.
Mr. Sharp’s father, John, wrote on his Facebook page on Monday
that two Caucasian bodies, a man and a woman, were among those found in shallow graves in the search area, but that positive identification had not been made.
Congo’s government said this month that the two United Nations officials had fallen into the hands of unidentified "negative
forces" along with four Congolese who were with them near the village of Ngombe in the province of Kasai-Central.