African Union (AU) investigators discovered mass graves in South Sudan and found evidence of horrific crimes, including forced cannibalism, according to a long-awaited report.
President Salva Kiir’s faction in the conflict is also accused of recruiting an irregular tribal force before the outbreak of war in 2013.
The report, released late Tuesday, also disputes that there was a coup attempt in December 2013 by former Vice-President Riek Machar.
Government troops carried out organised killings of members of the ethnic Nuer in Juba, the capital, the report said.
When violence broke out, Machar, a Nuer, became a rebel leader. He and Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, recently signed a peace agreement.
The investigators found that the conflict began on December 15, 2013, as a skirmish broke out between Dinka and Nuer soldiers of the presidential guard following political tension between Kiir and Machar, who had been fired as Kiir’s deputy the previous July.
The report’s release had been delayed by the African Union’s Peace and Security Council. The killings were “an organised military operation that could not have been successful without concerted efforts from various actors in the military and government circles,” the report said.
“Roadblocks or checkpoints were established all around Juba and house-to-house searches were undertaken by security forces. During this operation male Nuers were targeted, identified, killed on the spot or gathered in one place and killed.”
The report said Minister of Defence Kuol Manyang Juuk described a shadowy “group [that had] organised itself as Rescue the President. It killed most people here [in Juba] from December 15th to 18th. It was even more powerful than organised forces.”
The group comprised some Dinka soldiers who had been mobilised following a 2012 border crisis with northern neighbor Sudan.
Some of these soldiers were moved south to Kiir’s private farm near Juba in 2013 and later participated in the killings, the report said, citing interviews with informants.
