Investigating magistrate appointed in Belgium in Congo conflict minerals case
The DRC in December filed criminal complaints accusing Apple subsidiaries of using so-called conflict minerals in their supply chain.
South African police are hunting a gang leader from Lesotho believed to have controlled operations at an illegal gold mine where 78 bodies were recovered last week after months of police siege.
“Tiger” is believed to have surfaced from the deep mine in Stilfontein while it was under police surveillance and escaped with the help of officials, the South African Police Service said on Monday.
“Extensive investigations and tracing operations are under way to find those officials who aided his escape between shaft 11 and the Stilfontein police holding cells,” their statement said.
Police were widely condemned for the months-long operation, in which they cut off food and water in an attempt to force the miners out and arrest them.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said the state should not be held responsible for the deaths.
“You have got people who voluntarily entered mines and did some illegal activities and in the process died inside those mines. To then come back and say the state is going to take the blame for that, in my view, is misplaced,” he told Reuters at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
The standoff culminated in a state-sponsored rescue last week in which 246 survivors were retrieved from the mine, many emaciated and weak from hunger.
Police have cited miners who said there had been food underground, but that the gang leaders had kept it for themselves.
Thousands of people are believed to be mining gold illegally in abandoned industrial mines in South Africa. Some spend months at a time underground.
The operations are thought to be run by Lesotho-based gangs, and police say some of the workers are illegal immigrants recruited from neighbouring countries without knowing what they have come to do.
Miners named “Tiger” as a leader of operations, the police statement said.
“He is also being accused by some illegal miners … (of) being allegedly responsible for some deaths, assault and torture that is alleged to have taken place according to videos in police possession,” it said. “He is also alleged to have hoarded and kept food away from other illegal miners.”
(Reporting by Nellie Peyton;Additional reporting by Brad Haynes in Davos and Sfundo Parakozov in Johannesburg;Editing by Alexander Winning, Bernadette Baum and Kevin Liffey)
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