British pilot imprisoned after discovering suspected LRA massacre

“Some had been beaten to death with sticks, others had had boiling water
poured on them first, then killed. It looked exactly like reports I’ve seen
of other Lord’s Resistance Army attacks. It was pretty awful.”

The rebel army, headed by Joseph
Kony
, continues to terrorise civilian populations in the remote
jungles of southern CAR,
the Democratic
Republic of Congo
and South
Sudan
.

Kony was the subject of an internet video that went viral last month, viewed
more than 90 million times.

“We called the military, they came the next day and basically freaked out,”
Mr Simpson said.

“They took a few photographs on their mobile phones and that was the sum
total of their investigation. They left immediately.”

Days later, Mr Simpson’s aircraft was fired at as he took off from the nearest
town, Bakouma. He says locals angered that they were not given jobs at his
company, owned by a CAR-born Swedish hunter, were to blame.

“It’s pretty clear that the killings had nothing to do with us, but it
helped some of the guys in town follow their own agendas to blame us,”
he said.

Both Mr Simpson and his boss, Erik Mararv, went voluntarily to the capital to
answer questions, and both were immediately arrested. Neither has been
charged but both are still imprisoned, more than a month later.

Emelie Mararv, Mr Mararv’s wife, confirmed that there had been no information
about why the two men had been jailed, and no sense of when they would be
released.

Firmin Findiro, the CAR Justic Minister, told The Daily Telegraph: “The
government is not accusing the men of anything – the case will be brought
before a magistrate next week who will see whether they actually had any
role in the incident.”

“The men have legal representation and I have received both the British and
Swedish consuls regarding the matter.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said they were providing consular assistance.

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