Kinshasa | Friday
A SENIOR army officer on trial over the killing of president Laurent Kabila in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Thursday told a military court that the man who shot Kabila committed suicide immediately afterwards.
Colonel Eddy Kapend Irung, the main accused in the trial, said he had been told that the alleged assassin, Rachidi Muzele, turned his gun on himself as soon as he had shot Kabila on January 16, 2000.
”I was outside when a soldier from the presidential guard called me and said, in Swahili, ‘It’s Rachidi — he’s just killed the president, and when he saw me, he killed himself,”’ Eddy Kapend told the court.
Col. Eddy Kapend was at the time the head of Kabila’s presidential guard.
He identified the man who made the statement about Rachidi’s suicide as a Lieutenant Tshibagura.
Eddy Kapend said Tshibagura’s statement about the suicide was made only minutes after he heard three shots from the president’s office.
A total of 135 people are on trial over the assassination, and many of them could face the death penalty.
On Wednesday a defence attorney in the trial, Jean-Marie Eley Lofele, said in court that the proceedings ”do not function in conformity with international human rights commitments.” He notably pointed to the fact that there is no right of appeal to any sentences handed down by the special military court.
After his assassination Kabila was swiftly succeeded by his son Joseph, then a young armed forces chief, who was propelled into office by Kinshasa politicians.
The new head of state revived efforts to end the war raging in the vast central African country, which began with an insurgency against his father’s regime in August 1998 and has since drawn in the armies of at least five other countries. – Sapa-AFP