MADRID (AFP) — Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa Tuesday said he is writing a novel on Irish patriot Roger Casement, famed for his reports criticising rights abuses in Congo at the turn of the 20th century.
"In his diaries he reported on authentic atrocities, atrocities involving crimes that are still hidden by the British secret service," the 72-year-old author was quoted Tuesday as saying by daily Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Llosa, whose books include "The War at the End of the World" and "Death in the Andes", said he plans to travel to Congo in October to research his new novel on Casement, the newspaper added.
The author was speaking to reporters in the Spanish town of Santillana del Mar.
In 1904, Casement published a first-hand report exposing human rights abuses in the Congo Free State which had been the private fiefdom of Belgium's King Leopold II since 1885.
The report achieved international renown and it is credited with leading Belgium to overhaul its administration of the African territory.
Casement served as Britain's consul in Angola, Brazil, Mozambique and the Congo Free State.
He was arrested on charges of treason during World War I after returning from Germany, where he was seeking aid for the Irish independence movement. He was hanged by the British in 1916.
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