(JED/IFEX) – On 22 September 2000, authorities at the Kinshasa Penitentiary and Re-education Centre (CPRK, formerly the Makala Central Prison) authorised Freddy Loseke Lisumbu la Yayenga, publisher of the newspaper “La Libre Afrique”, to seek medical treatment at the Kinshasa General Hospital (formerly the Mama Yemo Hospital), under military escort. Loseke told JED representatives who […]
(JED/IFEX) – On 22 September 2000, authorities at the Kinshasa Penitentiary and Re-education Centre (CPRK, formerly the Makala Central Prison) authorised Freddy Loseke Lisumbu la Yayenga, publisher of the newspaper “La Libre Afrique”, to seek medical treatment at the Kinshasa General Hospital (formerly the Mama Yemo Hospital), under military escort.
Loseke told JED representatives who visited him at the CPRK on Sunday 24 September that he expected to go to the hospital on Monday 25 September.
Following his first medical examination on Tuesday 26 September, doctors at the Kinshasa General Hospital established that Loseke suffers from a slipped disc.
The doctors decided that they would perform other medical tests on Loseke as of 27 September before deciding on an appropriate treatment. As such, Loseke will have ambulatory treatments until his doctors decide that he should be admitted to the hospital as a patient.
JED representatives who were at the hospital noted that Loseke was screaming in pain while the doctors performed the tests.
Following the initial consultation, Loseke, who was escorted by three armed police officers and a prison guard, was taken back to the CPRK, where he is serving a three-year prison sentence.
Loseke was arrested on 31 December 1999 and, in May 2000, was tried and sentenced by the Court of Military Order (Cour d’ordre militaire, COM, a special military jurisdiction that acts as a court of first and last resort) to three years in prison for “insulting the army”. In a letter addressed to JED, dated 1 September and written from his CPRK cell, the journalist stated that his right leg is paralysed and that he suffers from kidney failure.
