"Criminal complaint against Danzer manager over human rights abuses against community in DRC", May 2015

In March 2015 the Office of the State Prosecutor in Tübingen discontinued investigations against a senior manager of Swiss and German timber manufacturer Danzer Group in connection with an attack on a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On 23 April the ECCHR and Global Witness filed a criminal complaint accusing a senior manager of Danzer of grave human rights violations against members of a forest community in the DRC. The manager is accused of aiding and abetting, through omission, the crimes of rape, grievous bodily harm, false imprisonment and arson...ECCHR is seeking to appeal this decision and is calling for investigations to be reopened. The state prosecution failed to take into account key pieces of evidence, including files from two investigative proceedings in Congo. These files contain records of testimony from several victims and witnesses providing a consistent account of the incident that corresponds with investigation reports by Congolese authorities...