Two Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) soldiers went on trial before a military court hours after being arrested for the murder of a prominent radio journalist, an official said on Friday.
Sud-Kivu provincial Governor Celestin Cibalonza said Corporal Katuzelo Mbo and Sergeant Arthur Bokongo Lokombe had been arrested by police 40m from where Serge Maheshe, a 31-year-old journalist working for the United Nations-sponsored Okapi radio station, was shot dead on Wednesday.
Their guns had been recently fired, he alleged, adding that their trial, which began late on Thursday, was permitted under military law.
A local media rights group, Journalists in Danger (JED), condemned the summary trial, saying that no serious inquiry had been made or ballistic expertise sought by the authorities. Two friends present when Maheshe was shot told the court they could not identify the killers as it had been too dark.
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) also expressed concern, saying it was ”surprised” by the speed of the proceedings and the conditions in which the trial was being held.
”We can be pleased at the swiftness of the inquiry, but the precipitation with which military justice has presented the two suspects is more than surprising,” it said in a statement in Kinshasa. It criticised the lack of proper questioning, the lack of a right to a defence and the absence of witness protection, and said the case did not look like a credible legal procedure.
”We were thinking that the killing of Serge Maheshe was sufficiently tragic for the DRC authorities to take it seriously. There is still time to make sure it does not turn into a charade,” RSF said.
It said that shortly before he was murdered, Maheshe had said he was threatened after being ”briefly arrested and brutalised by two members of the presidential guard”.
Outspoken
Maheshe ran Okapi in Bukavu in the east of the DRC and had been threatened by various groups, including the military, for his outspoken reporting.
His murder by two men in plain clothes was widely condemned, including by the UN, the Swiss Hirondelle Foundation, which partners the UN mission in the DRC in operating the Okapi station, and European Union ambassadors.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday expressed shock and sadness over the murder and offered full UN support for the arrest of perpetrators.
Witnesses said Maheshe and another man had been visiting a friend and was climbing into his UN-marked vehicle when he was shot by two men with automatic rifles.
Radio Okapi, where ”the people of the DRC speak to the people of the DRC”, is claimed to be the biggest national French-speaking station in sub-Saharan Africa with 150 journalists, 30 partner stations and about 10 regional bureaux.
At least 5 000 people, meanwhile, braved driving rain to attend Maheshe’s funeral at Bukavu cathedral on Friday, including UN and local government officials, and his subsequent interment at the city’s cemetery.
The crowd packed the cathedral and spilled on to the terrace outside, according to Carmine Camerini of the UN mission in the DRC in Bukavu. Tributes were paid at the Okapi radio station where one of Maheshe’s colleagues urged the country’s young people to take him as an example.
The local UN mission bureau chief, Alpha Sow, said Maheshe had fought for trustworthy and independent news. — Sapa-AFP