Since its resurgence in 2021, the M23 has seized vast swathes of the DRC's resource-rich east with Rwanda's help.
Yet the armed group has struggled to clamp down on the region's persistent unrest, with hundreds of Congolese soldiers and pro-government militia fighters having dispersed to evade capture by the M23.
“M23’s public statements about bringing order to eastern DRC mask their horrific treatment of detainees,“ said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International's Regional Director for East and Southern Africa.
Former prisoners said they had been accused by the M23 of supporting the DRC’s government, though the “M23 never produced evidence of these accusations”, the Amnesty report said.
Eight of the witnesses said they had seen fellow detainees die while incarcerated, “likely from torture and harsh detention conditions”, the report added.
According to the witnesses, M23 fighters tortured prisoners “with flexible wooden rods, boards, electric cables, engine belts, gun butts, or sticks, on their backs, legs, buttocks and genitals, leaving them with signs of trauma”.
The rights group called for the M23 to grant independent monitors access to its detention sites.
Responding to the report on X, M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka accused Chagutah of making “grotesque and unsubstantiated accusations”.
“We will soon publish a detailed work discrediting each allegation of this so-called report,“ the spokesman added.
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