(JED/IFEX) – Ntumba Lumembu, a journalist with “La Tempête des Tropiques” (Tropical Storm”) in Kinshasa, was released on the morning of 11 January 2006, after spending three months and 18 days in prison. During questioning by the journalist’s lawyers, the State Security Court (CSE) prosecutor admitted that the journalist “could not assume penal responsibility for […]
(JED/IFEX) – Ntumba Lumembu, a journalist with “La Tempête des Tropiques” (Tropical Storm”) in Kinshasa, was released on the morning of 11 January 2006, after spending three months and 18 days in prison. During questioning by the journalist’s lawyers, the State Security Court (CSE) prosecutor admitted that the journalist “could not assume penal responsibility for the charges against him, considering his deteriorated mental state established in a medical report.”
Ntumba Lumembu was arrested on 23 September 2005 in the entrance of Congolese National Radio-Television offices by the presidential military group GSSP (Groupe Spécial de Sécurité Présidentielle) who were stationed to guard the public media house. Lumembu was taken into custody for “propagating false noise in public” after having said to the military that he was going to declare a take-over of the GSSP.
Patrice Booto, editor of the paper “Le Journal” and his own “Supplément Pool Malebo”, both published in Kinshasa, testified for the second time, on 10 January 2006 in front of the CSE, which rejected his request for provisional release formulated in a 27 December hearing. Booto, who has spent more than 69 days in detention, was held for “propagating false noise in public”, “offending the head of state” and “insulting the government”.
An article published both in the 15 to 21 September 2005 (#20) edition of “Pool Malebo” and the 16 to 19 September 2005 (#181) edition of “Le Journal” claimed that “a US$30 million donation was made by the DRC to the Tanzanian Republic’s education sector at the same time that a labour dispute pitted the DRC government against the country’s teachers’ unions.
Booto was taken in for questioning in the early afternoon of 2 November 2005 by five armed plain-clothed secret service police officers (Services Spéciaux de la Police). He was immediately taken to the Kin-Mazière police station in Kinshasha/Gombe before being called before the CSE state prosecutor on 9 November 2005, who then moved him to Kinshasa’s Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre (Centre pénitentiaire et de rééducation de Kinshasa, CPRK, formerly Makala Central Prison).
