Troops’ brutal lynching casts hope aside for Central African Republic

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/troops-brutal-lynching-shows-instability-in-central-african-republic/2014/02/05/51461896-8ebe-11e3-878e-d76656564a01_story.html

Troops’ brutal lynching casts hope aside for Central African Republic
By Sudarsan Raghavan, Published: February 5

BANGUI, Central African Republic — The military ceremony Wednesday was meant to be a fresh beginning, an army being reconstituted after months of bloodshed, in front of a new interim president who declared how proud she was of the nation’s soldiers.

But moments after the ceremony ended, the past returned with vengeance.

A group of uniformed soldiers, witnesses said, spotted a man in the crowd who they suspected was a former rebel. They grabbed him and stripped off his clothes. Within seconds, he was stabbed to death with knives and machetes. One soldier stomped on his face; another dropped a huge slab of rock on his head. They chopped off one of his legs, the other foot and a hand. The soldiers dragged the corpse onto a busy avenue, as African peacekeepers watched.

Then the soldiers grabbed tires from a nearby repair shop, threw them on the corpse and set it on fire. They posed for pictures, smiling with the burned corpse. Many bystanders approved of the man’s brutal end. Revenge had become part of their society’s fabric.