**Updates IFEX alert of 7 January 2000** (JED/IFEX) – Freddy Loseke Lisumbu La Yayenga, managing editor of “La Libre Afrique”, published three times a week, has been missing from his solitary confinement cell at the Kokolo military base in Kinshasa/Lingwala since Sunday 9 January 2000. According to guards, the journalist allegedly escaped from his cell. […]
**Updates IFEX alert of 7 January 2000**
(JED/IFEX) – Freddy Loseke Lisumbu La Yayenga, managing editor of “La Libre Afrique”, published three times a week, has been missing from his solitary confinement cell at the Kokolo military base in Kinshasa/Lingwala since Sunday 9 January 2000. According to guards, the journalist allegedly escaped from his cell. Charles Kanyangambi and his son, who is a friend of Loseke, were arrested in his place.
On Saturday 8 January, the head of JED’s inquiry bureau visited the Kokolo base in hopes of seeing Loseke and to learn more details concerning his arrest. JED’s agent was told that Loseke was not allowed visitors because of “the seriousness of his case and the risk that he might escape.”
The suggestion that the journalist might have escaped surprises certain family members and friends of the family, who suggest that “it is difficult to believe that the journalist could escape from a solitary confinement cell located in the middle of a military base.”
Loseke was arrested on Monday 3 January and taken to the Seventh Military Region cells at the Kokolo base. To date, no official motive is known for his arrest, but unofficial sources point to the two last issues of the newspaper “La Libre Afrique” (issues 145 and 146), which reported on a probable coup d’état against President Kabila, led by a general (a former Katangan police officer) from Katanga province.
