Mission Investigate, in collaboration with a group of international journalists, was able to reveal that the UN had withheld crucial information about the murders of Zaida Catalán and Michael Sharp. A leak from within the UN headquarters in New York shows that information has been available to the UN saying that persons in the Congolese government can be linked to the murders. But this information was excluded in the only report that has been made on the murders so far.
Thursday, just over a week after the disclosure, Radio France International reports that one of the named soldiers in the leak, Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni, was arrested in the provincial capital of Kananga.
New recording shows the colonel was lying
Mission Investigate revealed that Colonel Mambweni has lied under oath about his cell phone contacts on the day of the murders. Even so, the Congolese foreign minister Mr Leonard She Okitundu branded as “lies”, the information that the state would be involved.
– We don't accept to be associated with these murders, Congolese authorities are not cruel, he told Swedish radio.
On Thursday, however, yet another sound recording was played during the trial in the Congo, showing that Colonel Mambweni hasn’t told the truth. The colonel has argued that he never met the UN experts before the murders. But the sound file, which was reportedly recorded by Zaida Catalán, proves the opposite.
The recording clearly shows that the colonel had lunch with the two UN experts, two days before they were murdered.
Had contact with a secret agent
In addition, the recording shows that Colonel Mambweni has been in contact with one of the agents from the Security service who, according to the UN-leak, duped Zaida Catalán and Michael Sharp to go to the place where they were murdered. It also shows that the colonel put the UN experts in contact with one of the false interpreters who duped them.
According to RFI, the sound recording has been handed over to the Congolese military prosecutor by the UN.
Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni is not yet charged and denies any involvement in the murders.
The report Deceptive diplomacy was broadcasted on SVT1 on Wednesday the 28th of November and is available on SVT Play.