06 December 2017 - NPWJ News Digest on international criminal justice

"Special Mission" - Recruitment of M23 Rebels to Suppress Protest in the DRC
by Human Rights Watch , 06 Dec 2017

In the lead-up to the December protests, and as domestic and international pressure on Kabila escalated, senior Congolese security force officers had mobilized at least 200 and likely many more former M23 rebel fighters from neighboring Uganda and Rwanda to protect Kabila and help quash the anti-Kabila protests. The M23 combatants were recruited between October and early December 2016 from military and refugee camps in Uganda and Rwanda—where many M23 fighters have been based since the armed group’s defeat in eastern Congo in November 2013.