Photo of the week : nearly 300 European mercenaries who were helping the FARDC have surrendered

Photo of the week : nearly 300 European mercenaries who were helping the FARDC have surrendered

The Rwandan army announced on Wednesday that it had received 288 European mercenaries who had surrendered to the M23 rebels. These mercenaries who were fighting alongside the Congolese army were given safe passage to Kigali before returning to their countries of origin. INFO SOS Médias Burundi

On Wednesday, Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) said they had “received and escorted more than 280 Romanian mercenaries who were fighting alongside Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) in eastern DRC”.

These mercenaries surrendered to the M23 after the capture of the strategic city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu.
“They are currently being transported to Kigali”, the Rwandan army stressed in the afternoon.

A total of 288 European mercenaries, mainly Romanians arrived in Rwanda on Wednesday afternoon, via the Rubavu border post, escorted by the M23 rebels.

The group arrived after being defeated and disarmed in Goma, the capital of North Kivu that fell under the control of the rebels earlier this week.
“They were in a large apartment. The M23 leaders showed us around. There was a canteen and an infirmary in this apartment. In any case, you can see that they were well treated,” a Rwandan journalist who was in Goma when these European mercenaries were presented to the press told SOS Médias Burundi.

Several reporters from local and foreign media are in the city of Gisenyi in Rwanda, on the border with Congo, to follow developments in the situation in the east of the vast central African country.

Some of them told the press that the group has been around for several years and has contracts all over the place. “I have been a member of this group for 13 years,” a visibly elderly mercenary told reporters.

They were transported by bus “to Kigali International Airport, before being sent back to their country”.

Since the capture of Goma, several UN officials have left this border town with Rwanda, to seek refuge in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. Others have been transferred from Kigali to Kinshasa, the capital of Congo.

Rwanda also continues to host Congolese soldiers, including officers who are seeking refuge in this “enemy” country.
The Rwandan Minister of Diplomacy, Ambassador Olivier Nduhungirehe, reacted to the reception of mercenaries, former allies of the FARDC.

“Rwanda was the only country in the world to sound the alarm on the recruitment and use of European mercenaries by President Félix Tshisekedi of the DRC, in total violation of a 1977 OAU Convention and a 1978 UN Convention in 1989,” he said on his X account (formerly Twitter).

The OAU is the Organization of African Unity that later became the current African Union (AU). It is outraged that neither the UN Security Council, nor the European Union, much less the countries of origin of these mercenaries, have ever condemned what it describes as “the subcontracting of this war by the government of Kinshasa”.

After their defeat and the fall of Goma, these mercenaries took refuge in bases of the UN Mission in Congo, MONUSCO, where UN peacekeepers negotiated their protection with M23 elements after disarming them.

“Their governments then asked Rwanda to facilitate their evacuation, via Kigali, which we accepted,” added Ambassador Nduhungirehe.

According to several sources, more than 2,000 mercenaries are said to have fought alongside Congolese government forces, the FARDC, and a coalition of other groups, including the FDLR, the militia formed by perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda.

The Burundian army is also engaged alongside the FARDC and their allies, which does not please Rwandan President Paul Kagame at all, who said this known in a virtual conference of heads of state of the East African Community in which the Congolese government did not participate on Wednesday evening.

Our photo : a Rwandan soldier and a police officer line up European mercenaries after crossing the border with Rwanda, January 29, 2025 (SOS Médias Burundi)

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