Kabila murder suspects demand amnesty following Kasongo's release

Prisoners jailed in connection with the murder of Laurent-Desire Kabila, the late president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), have demanded a general amnesty following the release of Maj Joseph Kasongo, an officer of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma - a former rebel movement now party to the national transitional government), who had been found guilty in absentia of involvement in the murder, and more recently had been accused of involvement in arms trafficking. According to Voix des Sans Voix (VSV), a Congolese human rights NGO, the detainees began their protest at the Centre penitentiaire de reeducation de Kinshasa (CPRK) on Monday. "Soldiers who were dispatched resorted to brutal beatings late on Thursday to force the detainees back into their cells," Floribert Chebeya, the president of VSV, told IRIN on Friday. "The prisoners were refusing to return to their cells, demanding the same kind of amnesty that was granted [Kasongo]." Chebeya said the whereabouts of three of the detainees was unknown. The director of the CPRK, Dido Kitungwa, confirmed the prisoners' protest, but called it a "rebellion". "No one has been reported missing," Kitungwa said. "However, the police sent three of the prisoners for isolation in another building, where they [the prisoners] then proceeded to attack those watching them." About 50 of those sentenced to prison in connection with the Kabila murder trail during 2002 are incarcerated at the CPRK. "Their food still comes from family members, they only have right to one supervised visit per week by one family member, and their cells are not very clean," Chebeya said. Kasongo, who like many others was sentenced in absentia during the Kabila murder trials, was arrested some two weeks ago in Bukavu, South Kivu Province, when a cache of arms was found in his home. His arrest provoked fighting in Bukavu between forces loyal to regional military commander Gen Prosper Nabyola, from the former Kinshasa government, and soldiers allied with RCD-Goma, during which three people died. Kasongo was released after RCD-Goma threatened to withdraw from the national unity government and related transitional institutions. Nabyola has been in hiding since the hostilities erupted. However, a military commission headed by DRC ground forces commander Maj-Gen Sylvain Buki has been in Bukavu since the beginning of the week in an effort to resolve the situation. Laurent-Desire Kabila was assassinated by one of his bodyguards on 16 January 2001.