While the EU is still recovering from its series of set-backs in Chad over the last two months, it’s been hit by bad news from an earlier mission. In 2003, the French led the EU’s first African venture, Operation Artemis, into the DR Congo to bail out beleaguered UN troops. This has usually been hailed as a great success – I’ve argued that the mission has actually received too much attention. And now this…
French and Swedish military officials said they were investigating allegations made in a Swedish television report that French soldiers participating in a European Union peacekeeping operation in Congo in 2003 tortured a civilian who was being held prisoner. Uppdrag Granskning, a Swedish television news magazine, broadcast a report based on interviews with Swedish soldiers who said they witnessed the torture, which was said to include mock drowning. French officials are investigating the episode. Swedish officials are looking into whether Swedish troops broke international law by failing to intervene.
