Why Putin’s Private Army Ordered Soldiers to Torture Me

BÉLOKO, Central African Republic—They were all wearing military fatigues and armed with Kalashnikovs when they showed up suddenly at about 5 o’clock one Friday evening at the start of December. The four men were soldiers from the Central African Armed Forces (FACA) who drove right up to where I was interviewing about a dozen people hoping to get cross the border.

Among those I was interviewing were a couple of artisanal miners who had gathered in front of a security checkpoint in the Central African Republic (CAR) border town of Béloko. It is the country’s first customs checkpoint on the trade corridor linking the capital, Bangui, to the Cameroonian port city of Douala. A number of them had lost their homes following the fighting between rebels and Russian paramilitaries supported by FACA forces, and were hoping to find refuge in Cameroon.

Suddenly, four gun-wielding soldiers appeared from nowhere, rushed me, and started to drag me away. I began to scream for help but the civilians around, including those I was interviewing, were too scared to intervene. Two armed Russian paramilitaries, who came to the scene when they heard me screaming, encouraged the soldiers to assault me, telling the FACA officials to beat me up until I confessed to being a criminal. When one elderly man courageously asked the soldiers why they were dragging me away on a stony road, one of them replied: “He’s a terrorist.”

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