THE editor-in-chief of the pro-government Avenir newspaper in Kinshasa was arrested last week by security services and has been held in a dark cell for five days, the daily said on Monday. The Avenir said Joachim Diana Gikupa has been held by the National Intelligence Agency (ANR) for articles he has written. The newspaper, which did not elaborate on the journalist’s work, condemned the action and said it had launched an official complaint against the ANR. “If an editor-in-chief of an important daily needs to be interrogated for several days in a dungeon over a civil affair, then what use are the courts in this country?” the newspaper wrote in its editorial. Journalists are arbitrarily rounded up in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which suffered through three decades of brutal rule under Mobutu Sese Seko, who died in 1997 after he was toppled by rebel leader Laurent Kabila. – AFP