The United Nations peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo provided food, fuel and logistical support to a Congolese colonel overseeing soldiers accused of gang rapes, massacres and other abuses, months after U.N. human rights investigators included him on a list of the army's most abusive commanders and in further internal warnings.  The U.N. decision to support Col. Innocent Zimurinda and other commanders on the list has been part of the mission's backing of Congolese military operations targeting a notorious rebel group. The 10-year-old U.N. peacekeeping mission, deployed to keep an elusive peace following two devastating Congolese wars, is the most expensive in the world and receives a quarter of its budget from the United States. In October, a top U.N. investigator cited "credible evidence" that Zimurinda had led a massacre of civilians that included the gang rape of 10 women, some of whose breasts were hacked off. In November, U.N. officials said the mission would halt support to units implicated in human rights violations, after U.N. lawyers had warned that support of abusive commanders could leave the mission vulnerable to charges of complicity in war crimes. But in rare interviews here, Zimurinda and one of his deputies said they were still receiving supplies in December and January. A U.N. spokesman, Kevin Kennedy, said he could confirm that supplies already "in the pipeline" had continued to flow as the mission waited for legal guidance from U.N. headquarters, and he said of Zimurinda that "there may have been units under his sector command that received support." – Washington Post