{{Looters after gold or jewels in the abandoned home of deposed Central African Republic president Francois Bozize came instead across a gruesome discovery — two human skeletons hidden beneath the garage floor.}}
At the house in Sassara, on the outskirts of the capital Bangui, Colonel Ali Garba — one of the Seleka rebels whose coalition toppled Bozize from power last month — gives a tour.
“The Monday (after the assault) I returned to pick up two vehicles… The house had been looted,” he says.
“The people were probably hoping to find diamonds or gold stashed away. They lifted up two tiles in the garage and discovered the two skeletons.”
He indicates the spot where the bodies were found, at the back of the garage, stowed in two-metre deep recesses underneath square tiles. All that now remains in the space is a scrap of coloured fabric.
“I saw them. They were bones with no flesh. The people had been dead for a while, at least several months, maybe more,” he says.
According to Col Garba, the house had already been pillaged by the time the rebels took Bangui in a swift assault on March 24.
NMG
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