**Updates IFEX alert of 4 February 2000** (JED/IFEX) – Gérard-Désiré Angengwa Agbeme, managing editor of the Kinshasa weekly “La Voix de la Vérité”, appeared before the Kinshasa/Pont Kasa-Vubu Court on Tuesday 22 February 2000, charged with “defamation and making damaging statements, public insults and threats”. The plaintiffs, Olivier Bierlaire, Charles Tambwe Lombe and Tshamala Kazadi, […]
**Updates IFEX alert of 4 February 2000**
(JED/IFEX) – Gérard-Désiré Angengwa Agbeme, managing editor of the Kinshasa weekly “La Voix de la Vérité”, appeared before the Kinshasa/Pont Kasa-Vubu Court on Tuesday 22 February 2000, charged with “defamation and making damaging statements, public insults and threats”.
The plaintiffs, Olivier Bierlaire, Charles Tambwe Lombe and Tshamala Kazadi, represented by their lawyer Abedi Ngongo, requested “the imprisonment of the journalist Angengwa, in accordance with Article 20 of the Congolese Penal Code, which stipulates that ‘when the same act constitutes several infractions, only the harshest sentence can be delivered'”.
According to Tshinkwela Musuayi, the journalist’s lawyer, “the action brought against Angengwa is an attempt to humiliate him, but also to muzzle the press, particularly the sports press, and stop it from bringing issues surrounding the management of sports teams to the public’s attention…the incriminating facts against the accused Angengwa consist of information drawn from various meetings of the DCMP (a Congolese football team), which accuse the plaintiffs of poorly managing the club.” As such, the defence believes the journalist must be acquitted, as the supposed infractions have not been established in either fact or law.
Further to these appeals, the court began its deliberations. In accordance with the law, a verdict will be delivered within eight days.
