Prisoner tortured at a swedish military base in the Congo

STOCKHOLM (Swedish Television - SVT)

During the international UN/EUFOR operation Artemis in the Congo 2003, a prisoner was tortured by French soldiers in front of Swedish colleagues, without anyone intervening. For nearly five years the Swedish and French defence departments have hushed the incident. None of those responsible have been brought before justice.

Operation Artemis was an UN/EUFOR Emergency Force with the mission to hinder an imminent massacre in the Congolese Ituri province. An area where several military groups had been fighting against each other and murdering the civilian population. Artemis consisted mainly of a French special unit but Sweden attached themselves to what was to be an EUFOR effort, with eighty men from the Special Protection Group (SSG), and the Parachute Rangers special operation unit (FSJ) ? the Swedish elite forces.

In July 2003, French soldiers captured a young man in his twenties, and took him to the Swedish-French base Chem-Chem. Uppdrag granskning from Swedish Television have interviewed several Swedish soldiers who were there and who explained what happened after.

The man was paraded around the base with a snare around his neck, by a French Colonel?s aide. During the interrogation, which continued several hours in the French section, the prisoner was subjected to mock drowning. The prisoner?s screams were heard over the entire base.

"I still wake up at night and hear the screams. It sounded like someone strangling a cat. Those that say they didn?t hear it are lying", says one of the soldiers to Uppdrag Granskning.
Later in the evening, the prisoner was led out to the common yard in front of a staff tent where the Swedish officers had just held a meeting.

The prisoner was bent down against the ground and an officer performed a mock execution by shooting his gun against the prisoner?s head ? without a shot going off. According to several witnesses the torture was led by French Colonel Christophe Rastouil.

The torture continued all evening, until midnight when the prisoner, with a hood over his head, was loaded onto a French jeep and driven out of the camp. His destiny is unknown.

"They said that they let him go, the question is only, where? If it was in the enemy camp then it is equivalent to a death sentence", says one of the Swedish soldiers to Uppdrag Granskning.

The Swedish command failed to report the incident
Many Swedish Soldiers reacted to what had happened and reported it to their superior, operational chief Hans Alm, who was at this time also the chief of the Special Protection group, SSG.

According to information from several of Uppdrag granskning?s sources, Alm was himself a witness but did not take action.
The day after he declared in front of an assembly of Swedish soldiers, that he had spoken with the French Colonel where he had emphasized that,
?If they treat prisoners that way, they should not do it in front of us?

One of the Swedish soldiers had, according to information reported to Uppdrag granskning, drawn up a special intelligence report on what had happened (with a detailed description of the torture) that he wanted to send to the headquarters in Stockholm. According to information from Uppdrag Granskning?s sources, Hans Alm refused this, with the explanation that he had made a ?gentlemen?s agreement? with the French Colonel not to report the incident.

Instead the Colonel sent a distorted report that only stated that a prisoner was arrested, interrogated and then released.

In conflict with human rights
According to General Johan Kihl and several other high military officials that Uppdrag granskning talked with, the incident is in conflict with both the Geneva convetion and the UN convention against torture, both of them part of Swedish law.

"It is in conflict with human rights and against the rules of combat. It is an obvious crime. My view is that, this is not about extracting information, it is about scaring people. That this can happen to you too", "It is about pure terror", says General Kihl to Uppdrag granskning.

Cover up
The Swedish military received information early about the incident through members of the Swedish force that reported the incident to their officers when they came home.
The incident has successively moved its way up through the ranks in the Swedish Armed Forces' and in the summer of 2006 Commander-in-Chief Håkan Syrén personally learned about the event. No measures were taken though and it was only first after an officer that was present left an official complaint about the incident to his unit Spring 2007, that an investigation was started.
After the complaint was made the French Defence Department was informed but according to Stefan Ryding-Berg, Director of Legal affairs at the Swedish Armed Forces the French concluded that no offence was committed. When Stefan Ryding-Bergs Swedish investigation in December 2007 concluded that torture had taken place, the Swedish Commander-in-Chief wrote to his French counterpart and offered the French a copy of the report. Three months later no such request has been expressed from the French.

Promoted and decorated
The Swedish operational chief Hans Alm was promoted to Colonel upon returning home, and for his contribution in operation Artemis he was decorated with the Commander-in-Chief?s Gold Medal for Duty and with the French National Defence?s highest order.
The Commander-in-Chief Håkan Syrén received the French Legion of Honour in 2006 in part for the Swedish role in Operation Artemis.
In 2005, Christophe Rastouil was awarded Knight Commander of the Northstar Order by the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf (one of the highest honours a foreigner can receive).

Rastouil?s chief, Commander for the French special unit, the four-stared-general Henri Poncet was removed from his post the same year after an investigation revealed French soldiers together with his involvement had suffocated a prisoner during an operation in Ivory Coast in 2004.

Sven Bergman, Joachim Dyfvermark, Fredrik Laurin

Web:
www.svt.se/granskning

Contact:
Sven Bergman, mobile +46 706882525, email: sb@trojkan.se
Joachim Dyfvermark, mobile +46 706227575, email: jd@trojkan.se
Fredrik Laurin, mobile +46 708326202, email: fl@trojkan.se
Email all of us at one stroke: trojkan@trojkan.se

Editor Nils Hanson +46 31837487 email: nils.hanson@svt.se

Pictures (link to the right):

- General Rastouil N2003-166H32-0034 ECPAD.jpg

Commander Christophe Rastouil, in Bunia DRC 2003. According to the Swedish Soldiers eye-witness accounts he participated personally in the torture.
Copyright:
ECPAD
Etablissement de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle de la Défense
Pôle Commercial - Département Ventes
2 à 8 route du Fort
94205 Ivry-sur-Seine Cedex
tel : 01 49 60 59 55
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Email: ventes-archives@ecpad.fr

- camp chem chem SVT.jpg

Sketch of the Swedish-French Camp
Copyright: SVT ? free to use in connection to the story as long as the origin of the story, SVT Uppdrag granskning, is mentioned.

- camp chem chem SVT.jpg

Sketch that describes the torture that the young Congolese was subjected to. Graphics: Torbjörn Söderling
Copyright: SVT ? free to use in connection to the story as long as the origin of the story, SVT Uppdrag granskning, and artist Torbjörn Söderlind is mentioned.

- Colonel Hans Alms official report.pdf

The Report that Hans Alm sent home to the Headquarters in Stockholm. Copyright: SVT ? free to use in connection to the story as long as the origin of the story, SVT Uppdrag granskning, is mentioned.

- 20040926 Hans Alm Michèle Alliot-Marie SCANPIX.jpg

Picture: Hans Alm receiving the French National defence?s highest order by the French Defence minister Michèle Alliot-Marie. Photo: French Embassy.
Copyright: Scanpix
Scanpix Sweden AB, Gjörwellsgatan 30, SE-112 88 Stockholm Phone +46-8-738 38 14. Mobile +46-732 41 37 97 www.scanpix.se

- Boy identified as victim Josef AP.JPG
Boy identified by Swedish soldiers as the victim. According to frens intelligence reports his name was Josef and he belonged to the Hema militia.
Original caption from AP: "A Hema militia soldier wearing a shirt with the portrait of Osama Bin Laden greets a girl near the U.N. compound in Bunia, Saturday May 17, 2003 in the Congo. Fighting in and around Bunia between armed militias linked to rival Hema and Lendu tribes was estimated by the United Nations to have killed hundreds of people in the past week. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)"

- camp chem chem 2 SVT.jpg

Picture: It was on the Swedish ? French camp Chem chem that the torture took place.
Copyright: SVT ? free to use in connection to the story as long as the origin of the story, SVT Uppdrag granskning, is mentioned. Photo: Joachim Dyfvermark/SVT

- SSG BuniaSE Armed forces.jpg
- SSG HKP Bunia aug 2003 SE Armed forces.jpg

Picture: After almost five years of silence from the Swedish Armed forces some of the soldiers in Operation Artemis now come forward to tell what really happend.
Photo: Swedish Armed forces www.mil.se

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