NEW YORK, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- U.N. investigators Monday recommended that top officials in Guinea be referred to the International Criminal Court for the massacre of protesters in September.
Three African experts recounted details of the massacre of defenseless victims during a protest in a stadium and concluded junta leader Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara and top military officials should be further investigated, The New York Times reported.
At least 156 civilians were killed or are missing and 109 women were raped in what the commission concluded were "crimes against humanity."
Human Rights Watch charged in a report last week the massacre was carried out by the country's elite Presidential Guard. HRW concluded members of the military government's security forces tried to cover up the massacre by removing bodies from the stadium and hospitals and burying them in mass graves.
The U.N. investigators said soldiers burst into the political gathering firing at close range before running out of ammunition and then charging at protesters with daggers, bayonets and bludgeons -- and even using catapults at one point. Some of the victims were shot as they stopped to help wounded protesters, the report concluded.
The U.N. Security Council has not said whether it intends to take up the massacre, the Times reported.
