(JED/IFEX) – Guy Kasongo Kilembwe, editor-in-chief of the Kinshasa-based satirical weekly “Pot Pourri”, was freed on Thursday 22 March 2001 at 9:30 a.m. (local time). The journalist was released from solitary confinement at the National Information Agency/Interior Department (Agence nationale de renseignements/Direction intérieure, ANR/DI, secret services) in Kinshasa/Gombe, where he had been transferred the day […]
(JED/IFEX) – Guy Kasongo Kilembwe, editor-in-chief of the Kinshasa-based satirical weekly “Pot Pourri”, was freed on Thursday 22 March 2001 at 9:30 a.m. (local time). The journalist was released from solitary confinement at the National Information Agency/Interior Department (Agence nationale de renseignements/Direction intérieure, ANR/DI, secret services) in Kinshasa/Gombe, where he had been transferred the day before.
Kasongo was freed after ANR officials forced him to sign a statement saying that he took a solemn oath “to never again write articles that are hostile to the regime in power in Kinshasa.” He was also ordered to present a written apology to the government.
According to information obtained by JED, Kasongo was released on orders from ANR Administrator-Director General Didier Kazadi Nyembwe, who said that no file on the journalist’s case existed. However, no release documents were given to him when he was let out of the cell.
Kasongo, accompanied by his wife, went directly to the JED offices after his release. He had lost a great deal of weight, hadn’t shaved since his arrest and was extremely weak. He testified that he was severely flogged after his transfer to the ANR’s External Department (ANR/DE) on 6 March. A few days earlier, while he was still being held in the Congolese National Police (Police nationale congolaise, PNC) Special Services’ cells, located in the Kin-Mazière building, in Kinshasa/Gombe, he was whipped fifty times. In the former Régina Hotel cells, in Kinshasa/Gombe, the jailers whipped him with metal strips every night.
According to Kasongo’s wife, the journalist suffered from malaria while he was held in the ANR/DE centre. During his detention, his family was not allowed to visit him. He was also issued death threats several times.
JED noted that despite President Joseph Kabila’s orders to close all illegal detention centres (which are not answerable to the republic’s public prosecutor’s offices), and the reports circulated by the Ministry of Justice with regards to the effective execution of the president’s order, the ANR detention centre is still operational.
Kasongo was arrested on Wednesday 28 February in Kinshasa. The journalist told JED that the various interrogations he endured all related to “the satirical newspaper’s manifest hatred towards the minister of state responsible for the interior, Gaëtan Kakudji, who is from the same province as Kasongo, Katanga.”
