21 11 13 Daily Star: Fourty-one DR Congo soldiers go on trial for rape

The charges
also include murder and looting, Julien Paluku, governor of North Kivu province, told AFP, adding that judges had arrived from the capital Kinshasa to reinforce
those in Goma, the eastern regional hub where the trial is taking place.

A
high-ranking police officer said the tribunal's verdict will be final.
"There's no appeal. They are definitively convicted, or if they are to be
freed, they are freed."

The
charges date to November 2012, when rebels of the now defunct M23 movement
captured Goma and held it for 10 days.

The
regular soldiers are accused of committing the atrocities as they fled their
positions in and around Minova, in neighbouring South Kivu
province, in the face of the M23 onslaught.

A United Nations investigation said "135 cases of sexual
violence, as well as other serious human rights violations including murders
and massive looting (were) perpetrated by the soldiers" between November
20 and 30 in
and around the city of Minova.

The joint
investigation by UN peacekeeping force MONUSCO and the UN human rights agency
also identified 59 cases of sexual violence committed by M23 fighters in the
Goma area during the same period.

In October
this year, MONUSCO lamented that: "Almost a year after these incidents,
none of the presumed perpetrators of these human rights violations has been
brought to justice… in spite of the Congolese authorities' commitment to
prosecute the perpetrators."

The DR Congo government signed an accord with the UN in
April to step up the fight against sexual abuse by armed groups and soldiers,
which remains rampant mainly in the east, where a plethora of armed groups are
still active.

The trial
opens barely three weeks after the UN-backed Congolese army defeated the M23.