ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Villagers in Democratic Republic of Congo discovered the remains of two U.N. investigators and their Congolese interpreter who went missing this month in an area engulfed in a violent uprising, a government spokesman said on Tuesday. Villagers on Monday stumbled on the bodies of Michael Sharp, a US citizen, Swedish national Zaida Catalan, and Congolese translator Betu Tshintela in a shallow grave in Kasai Central, a province some 1,700 kilometers from the capital of Kinshasa. In a statement issued in New York, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres confirmed that the remains of the two investigators missing since March 12 had been found in Congo and said the world body would conduct an inquiry. Police informed the authorities in the capital Kinshasa on Monday and a team including the provincial police commissioner was sent to the scene to identify the bodies. “After tests … it is possible to identify the bodies as the two U.N. experts and their interpreter as being found near the Moyo river,” Congo government spokesman Lambert Mende said. The confirmation came a day after Sharp’s father, John Sharp of Hesston, Kansas, wrote on his Facebook page that the bodies of two Caucasians had been found in shallow graves in the search area, saying there was a high probability the dead were his son and his son’s colleague. “This is a message I hoped never to write,” he wrote, adding that DNA tests and dental records would be used to confirm the identities of the bodies. The Kinshasa government said earlier this month that the two UN officials had fallen into the hands of unidentified “negative forces” along with four Congolese who were with them near the village of Ngombe in Kasai Central.
Authorities find the remains of two missing U.N. investigators—former Swedish politician Zaida Catalán and U.S. national Michael Sharp—in a shallow grave in the province of Kasaï-Central, Democratic Republic of the Congo.