France detains Liberia's ex-militant commander for crimes against humanity
What's the story
France detained a suspected former militant commander from Liberia's (Africa) civil war and charged him with crimes against humanity for atrocities including torture and cannibalism, police said yesterday.
A legal source said the man, identified as a naturalized Dutch citizen, Kunti K, is suspected of being a former commander in the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), which fought during the 1990s.
Information
Kunti is suspected of torture, murder, slavery, cannibalism
Arrested on Tuesday in the Paris region, Kunti is suspected of torture, murder, slavery, the use of child soldiers, and cannibalism between 1993-1997. Liberia, Africa's oldest republic, formed by freed American slaves, was devastated by two civil wars which killed around 250,000 people between 1989-2003.
Details
A little about the ULIMO
ULIMO was set up to fight a rebel force headed by warlord-turned-President Charles Taylor, who is currently serving a 50-year-prison sentence for aiding and abetting rebels who committed atrocities in neighboring diamond-rich Sierra Leone.
Kunti K, born in 1974, was detained in a joint operation by elite GIGN police and officers from France's OCLCH agency, which investigates war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.