The arrival in Kinshasa of a delegation of Pygmies from strife-torn Ituri province "will enable us to build up the case and identify and track down the perpetrators," interim prosecutor Tshibambe kia Pungwe said late Monday.
The prosecutor's office has opened an enquiry "to find out more about the atrocities", which have been blamed on local rebel movements seeking to gain ground and mineral resources in Ituri.
The head of the Pygmy delegation, Jackson Basikania, on Saturday said that "Pygmies are the victims of serious human rights violations committed by troops from the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) and the Congolese Rally for Democracy-National (RCD-N) rebel factions, both backed by Uganda."
The UN Security Council last week slammed the MLC and smaller allied rebel groups for "massacres and systematic violations of human rights" targetting mainly the Pygmies in northeastern Ituri and Nord-Kivu provinces.
Investigators from the UN observer mission in Kinshasa, MONUC, earlier this month reported that witnesses had told them of acts of cannibalism, massacres, rape and looting committed by rebels in northeastern DRC.
"Among those who were executed, mutilated and cannibalised were members of the Pygmy community who, for the first time in ages, have been driven out of the forest," the UN mission said in a report dated January 11.
Basikania regretted that other Congolese people were not sufficiently aware of the plight of the Pygmies, whose population was diminishing every year due to a low birth rate and high infant mortality.
Jean-Pierre Bemba, leader of the MLC, has vowed to hold a public trial within the next two weeks of people in his movement accused of cannibalism and other atrocities - Sapa-AFP.
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