Bodies of 2 Missing U.N. Experts Are Said to Have Been Found in Congo<br />By REUTERSMARCH 28, 2017<br />ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Two United Nations investigators<br />and their interpreter who disappeared in the Democratic Republic of Congo this month are among the bodies discovered in a shallow grave by villagers, a government spokesman said on Tuesday.<br />The militants pose an increasingly serious threat to the rule of President Joseph Kabila, whose decision to stay on beyond the end<br />of his elected mandate last December has sent ripples of unrest across the country, a vast mining powerhouse of Central Africa.<br />The missing investigators, Michael Sharp, an American,<br />and Zaida Catalan, a Swede, were members of a group of experts monitoring enforcement of sanctions imposed on the country by the United Nations Security Council when they disappeared in an area engulfed by a violent uprising.<br />Mr. Sharp’s father, John, wrote on his Facebook page on Monday<br />that two Caucasian bodies, a man and a woman, were among those found in shallow graves in the search area, but that positive identification had not been made.<br />Congo’s government said this month that the two United Nations officials had fallen into the hands of unidentified "negative<br />forces" along with four Congolese who were with them near the village of Ngombe in the province of Kasai-Central.
