Free Republic

In a small house on a hill overlooking Lake Kivu, a young Congolese soldier recounts the crimes he and his comrades committed in Minova a few months ago. "Twenty-five of us gathered together and said we should rape 10 women each, and we did it," he said. "I've raped 53 women. And children of five or six years old. "I didn't rape because I am angry, but because it gave us a lot of pleasure," says 22-year-old Mateso (not his real name). "When we arrived here we met a lot of women. We could do whatever we wanted." ... On...

Presidential candidate Barack Obama says the United States should lead a campaign to postpone Zimbabwe’s planned runoff election for president and sponsor a fair one. Obama, the Democrats’ probable nominee, says U.S. and regional leaders should join to spread word that President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean government “is illegitimate and lacks any credibility.” The candidate says the runoff election scheduled Friday should be put off until it can be conducted “under a strong international monitoring presence and, to the extent possible, meaningful civil protection.” If that is impossible, Obama said Tuesday, “regional leaders backed by the international community should pursue an...

As buses finally started arriving to pluck refugees from the Louisiana Superdome yesterday, a horrifying picture emerged of the squalor, violence and mayhem that they faced during the days spent huddled in the stadium. Twenty-five thousand miserable people — many of whom lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina — hunkered down with little food and little water, overflowing toilets, stifling heat and the unbearable stench of human waste. Children slept in pools of urine. Crack vials littered the bathrooms. Bloodstains smeared the walls near vending machines that had been pried open. Gunfire has ricocheted down the corridors. There were two...

Abducted Ethiopian Girl Found Being Guarded by Lions, Authorities SayBy Anthony Mitchell Associated Press Writer Published: Jun 21, 2005 ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday. The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of...

Boys from Africa are being murdered as human sacrif ices in London churches. They are brought into the capital to be offered up in rituals by fundamentalist Christian sects, according to a shocking report by Scotland Yard. [snip]