Libel charges brought by a group of generals against renowned Angola journalist Rafael Marques, who accused them of complicity in human rights abuses in the country, have been dropped, Marques confirmed Thursday...Marques said the generals agreed to end their quest to silence him, and did not contest the allegations of killings and torture in the country's diamond-rich Lunda Norte province, which Marques outlined in his 2011 book Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola. "I think they have learned a lesson," said Marques. "For all the publicity it's generated will help to reduce significantly the level of human rights abuses in the region."...

The management of the companies in the province, claimed Marques, were given total impunity to mistreat and even murder workers — a situation he said the generals must have been aware of.  But on Thursday, Marques agreed that there would be no further editions of the book published, and told the court he found it plausible the generals were never informed by their representatives of his inquiries into abuses in the diamond mines of Lunda Norte. In exchange, the generals agreed to monitor the human rights situation in the province, and did not dispute that more than 100 killings and 500 incidents of torture took place in the context of the mining operations.