KINSHASA (Reuters) - Congo arrested on Friday a senior army commander accused of ordering his men to rape more than a dozen women in turbulent eastern Congo earlier this month, a United Nations spokesman said.
The arrest follows the detention of 10 other soldiers, and takes place at a time when rights groups and the U.N.'s peacekeeping force MONUSCO are putting pressure on the central African state to crack down on rogue elements in its military.
"(MONUSCO) reported seeing Lt. Colonel Kibibi Mutwara being arrested by members of the Congolese army and said he, along with the ten other soldiers, will be transferred to Uvira," U.N. spokesman Tahirou Diao told Reuters.
Kibibi was arrested in Democratic Republic of Congo's Fizi region in the rebel-infested South Kivu province, where soldiers are alleged to have carried out dozens of rapes on New Year's Day.
The U.N. said earlier this week that Congo planned to put soldiers on trial as early as next week. Colonel Kibibi has denied he instructed his men to carry out the abuses.
Sexual violence is a regular occurrence in eastern Congo, a vast region which continues to suffer from conflict after a brutal civil war that ended in 2003, leaving more than five million people dead.
Last year hundreds of people were raped by members of the FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu militia operating in eastern Congo, and the army has also regularly been accused of carrying out atrocities.
The rights group Amnesty International earlier this week condemned what it called "the virtual impunity the Congolese forces benefit from."
(Reporting by Jonny Hogg; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Tim Pearce)
