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Reacting to a government-sponsored report implicating it in the January assassination of Laurent-Desire Kabila, the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) has categorically denied any involvement.
In a statement issued on Monday, it countered that those responsible for the former president’s death were merely trying to deflect blame in an effort to scuttle the planned inter-Congolese dialogue. “The report is filled with lies and slander, meant to spare the true assassins, to tarnish the image of innocent people, and especially to render impossible the holding of an inter-Congolese dialogue,” the statement noted.
“The assassins of Kabila are still in office in Kinshasa”, the statement continued, and suggested that current president Joseph Kabila, who was the head of the military in Kinshasa at the time of the assassination, “must know more”, noting that officers appointed by Joseph Kabila were in charge of his father’s security. The statement reiterated the RCD’s “full support” for the inter-Congolese dialogue. It urged the international community to dismiss the government report, and called for the creation of an independent, international committee of inquiry to investigate the assassination.
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