Deputy governor, 16 soldiers arrested over "collaboration with Rwanda"

The deputy governor of Beni, a area in North Kivu Province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and 16 soldiers were arrested on Thursday on the orders of the governor who accused them of being Rwandan collaborators, a Congolese military official told IRIN. The newly appointed regional military commander for North Kivu, Brig-Gen Obed Rwibasira, said the arrested soldiers were in an advance party of some of his staff and escorts who had gone to the town of Beni to prepare for his arrival in the province early next week. "I was planning to go and acquaint myself with the area and look at the military deployments," Rwibasira told IRIN. The arrests come five days after the UN Mission in DRC, known as MONUC, issued a statement on the presence of Rwandan troops in the Congo, an accusation denied by local authority officials and villagers in Buganaga, the place where the Rwandans were allegedly seen by MONUC on 21 April. Rwibasira said those responsible for the arrests were former soldiers of the Le Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-ML) opposed to Congo's unification process. Those arrested include a colonel, three majors, one captain, a regional provincial security officer and 10 non-commissioned officers. The deputy governor and the colonel were part of RCD-ML but were accused of being allies of the "foreign Rwandan elements." "If MONUC does not intervene to order the release of these people, I will take it upon my self and the action will be a serious one," Rwibasira said. A UN official in Goma, who requested anonymity, said MONUC was still verifying the circumstances that led to the arrests. Over the past five years, and as a result civil war in the vast country, North Kivu had been divided into two parts — one controlled by the former RCD-Goma with its headquarters in Goma and the other by RCD-ML, stationed in Beni.