Wives of men sentenced to death in connection with the January 2001 murder of then-president Laurent-Desire Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), during a news conference held in the Capital, Kinshasa, on Tuesday protested against the suspension of their visitation rights.
”We have been prohibited from having any contact with our husbands,” said Chantale Oya, wife of Col Eddy Kapend, Kabila’s former aide-de-camp who, along with 29 others, was sentenced to death in connection with Kabila’s assassination.
”The authorities of the Centre penitentiaire de reeducation de Kinshasa [CPRK, the capital’s central prison] will not allow us to bring food or medicine to our husbands,” she added. ”We are not even allowed to see them. We’re not even sure if they’re still in prison or alive.”
The wives of the condemned complained that no information was being given to them regarding their husbands.
”We are afraid because of the 15 people who were executed on the eve of the verdict,” said Leontine Bailly, wife of Constantin Nono Lutula, Kabila’s former special adviser on security matters, also sentenced to death.
She was referring to the report of 13 January by Congolese human rights NGO La Voix des Sans Voix (VSV — Voice of the Voiceless), in which the group said the 15 people who had been sentenced to death for crimes, including armed robbery and ”association with criminal elements”, had been executed.
The tightening of the prison regulations comes at a time when the Military Order Court has seized all the goods and properties of the condemned, thereby depriving their families of all means of survival.
Amnesty International has described the military court as ”a notoriously unfair military tribunal routinely used by the Congolese authorities as a means of suppressing dissent and imprisoning real or perceived opponents, including politicians, journalists and human rights defenders”.
Both Bailly and Oya complained that military personnel had occupied their homes. ”They even took my portable telephone and other goods belonging to me,” Oya said.
According to CPRK director Dido Kitungwa, the tightening of prison regulations for the condemned is simply a security measure. ”All the condemned are there, like all other prisoners. The measures we have taken are only to avoid any escape. There have already been escapes of people sought in this trial, such as Maj [Janvier] Bora [Kamwanya]. We will allow family members to see the condemned at some later point,” said Kitungwa. He gave his assurances that the CPRK was attending to the nutritional and medical needs of the prisoners.
Thirty people were sentenced to death on 7 January in a trial of 135 people accused of involvement in the murder of Kabila. Twenty of them are in prison, while 10 others, tried in absentia, are outside the country. Twenty-seven others were sentenced to life in prison, 41 were acquitted while the remainder received sentenced ranging from two to 20 years of imprisonment. – Irin