THE family of Charlotte Wilson, a British aid worker murdered in the central African state of Burundi, has obtained a secret document identifying her killers.

It tells in harrowing detail how rebel gunmen ordered her and 20 other passengers, including her fiancé and several children, off a bus in December 2000, then mowed them down in cold blood.

Three years on, the Titanic Express bus massacre is still remembered in strife-torn Burundi as one of the most vicious atrocities of a terrible civil war.

As the bus travelling from neighbouring Rwanda rounded a bend, it was attacked from all directions by rebels of the so-called Eagle battalion of the Forces for National Liberation (FNL), a Hutu terror group. It crashed and overturned.

The gunmen, under the command of Commandant Albert Sibomana, forced the passengers out through the windows. They were stripped, robbed and forced to lie on the ground. Three who pleaded for their lives were released with a message for the authorities.

Others who begged to be allowed to live were shot in the legs and told to get up and run before they were finally killed.

“We don’t know if Charlotte was one of those subjected to this appalling, humiliating torture,” said Richard Wilson, her younger brother, last week.

“But what is clear is that the ambush was mass murder, a war crime. Now we are in possession of an FNL document signed by Commandant Sibomana acknowledging responsibility for this outrage. He and the FNL must be prosecuted.”

Wilson said that in the document Sibomana describes in detail to his chief — presumed to be Agathon Rwasa, the FNL leader — how his battalion had ambushed the bus. The battalion commander reported that 40 of his men carried out the attack armed with assault rifles and a RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

They fired 963 bullets. The result, he wrote, was “21 killed”. Then he itemised all the booty taken from the dead: “Money, 24 wristwatches, 39 pairs of trousers, 49 shirts, eight skirts, six pairs of children’s shoes and children’s clothes, a bottle of perfume and a bottle of Martini.”

Wilson, 27, from Enfield, north London, had been teaching in Rwanda for Voluntary Service Overseas and was on her way to meet the parents of Richard Ndereyimana, her Burundian fiancé, in Bujumbura, the capital, for Christmas. Before leaving Rwanda she had written a letter to her mother, Margot Wilson, announcing the engagement.

Ever since the ambush the Wilson family and human rights groups have campaigned for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. They have established that Sibomana and the FNL were responsible for several other atrocities. Last year Margot Wilson was introduced to Domitien Ndayizeye, the Burundian president, when he visited London.

Acknowledging that the killings were a crime against humanity — for which there is no amnesty under international law — Ndayizeye told her the perpetrators must be punished. The Foreign Office concurred.

The president said locating killers in his small, violent and densely populated country was immensely difficult. Last week, however, it was revealed that he had personally invited Rwasa to join peace talks.

The country has been wracked by a decade-long ethnic conflict between rebels from the Hutu majority and the army, which is dominated by the minority Tutsi. An estimated 300,000 people have been killed. The FNL agreed last week to join the peace process. It is expected to be granted an amnesty soon in return for laying down arms.

Richard Wilson criticised the British government for its silence and urged it to use its influence to stop the FNL escaping justice.

“Just as a document has come to light identifying them as the killers, it looks as if they may get off,” he said.

“The bus attack was a war crime, yet the UK government’s attitude has been bizarre at times. It seems to have bought the idea that quietly forgeting mass murder will help bring peace to Burundi.

“There is a double standard with its attitude to amnesty. The government has a good record in standing up against war crimes in other parts of the world. Why will it not speak out in this case in Burundi?”

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