BRAZZAVILLE, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Congolese youths protested outside the French embassy in the capital Brazzaville on Tuesday, burning a French flag after the former colonial power said it planned to reopen a probe into an alleged massacre. France's highest court last week ordered the reopening of an investigation into whether Congolese officials were involved in torturing and killing hundreds of civil war refugees who vanished in 1999 after returning to Brazzaville. The central African country's president, Denis Sassou Nguesso, has denounced the French move as a "provocation", saying the affair was over and he would accept no foreign interference. Around 100 pro-government youths shouting "Down with France" and "What does France want from us?" gathered outside the embassy in the heart of Brazzaville before riot police arrived to disperse them, witnesses said. Human rights campaigners accuse soldiers loyal to Sassou Nguesso of torturing and killing more than 350 young male refugees shortly after they returned home from the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the other bank of the Congo river. Witnesses say the men were taken for ex-rebels returning to the country and that they were tortured by the security forces out of revenge. A court in the French town of Meaux, where former Congo police chief Jean-Francois Ndengue owned a house, launched an investigation after human rights groups filed a complaint in 2001 against the president and other officials. A French appeals court halted the investigation and ordered Ndengue's release in 2004. But its highest court, the Cour de Cassation, quashed the appeals court ruling last Wednesday, opening the way for the French investigation to resume. A Congolese tribunal in 2005 acquitted 15 suspects, including several army generals, of charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and other offences relating to the incident. But it recognised people had disappeared, and awarded compensation to the victims' families.
