**Updates IFEX alerts of 13 December and 8 November 1999** (JED/IFEX) – In a second letter to State Prosecutor Luhonge Kabinda Ngoy dated 13 December 1999, JED condemns the fact that Polycarpe Honsek Hokwoy, editor of the weekly newspaper “La Solidarité”, remains imprisoned, despite the Kinshasa/Ngaliema Court’s order for his provisional release. The court delivered […]
**Updates IFEX alerts of 13 December and 8 November 1999**
(JED/IFEX) – In a second letter to State Prosecutor Luhonge Kabinda Ngoy dated 13 December 1999, JED condemns the fact that Polycarpe Honsek Hokwoy, editor of the weekly newspaper “La Solidarité”, remains imprisoned, despite the Kinshasa/Ngaliema Court’s order for his provisional release. The court delivered its decision on 17 November in the council chamber of the Kinshasa Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre (Centre pénitentiaire et de rééducation de Kinshasa, CPRK).
JED recalls in its letter that “in session in the council chamber of the CPRK on Friday 26 November and Friday 3 December 1999, the Kinshasa/Gombe High Court decided on appeal, in the public minister’s presence, that there was no case against Mr. Hosek, beyond the 24 hour legal period of detention, nor was there an appeal of the previously cited order calling for his provisional release, nor any other documentation ordering the continued preventive detention of the accused.”
JED told the state prosecutor that “in accordance with the law and logically speaking, the public minister must have taken note of this situation and should do everything in his power to assure that Mr. Honsek can benefit from the provisional release which he is entitled to. At this time, this has not taken place.”
Without commenting on the details of the case, JED protested “the prolonged and illegal detention of Polycarpe Honsek Hokwoy,” and asked for “his immediate release, or at the very least his provisional release, as ordered by the Kinshasa/Ngaliema Court.”
Honsek was arrested on 6 November at his newspaper’s headquarters in Kinshasa/Gombe by armed men claiming to be police officers with the public prosecutor’s office (Police judiciaire des parquets, PJP). He was first locked up in solitary confinement at the PJP, and then at the Kinshasa/Gombe High Court prison. He has been held at the CPRK since 12 November. Honsek had wrongly stated in his newspaper that the finance and budget minister had been arrested. The journalist is being represented by lawyers Willy Wenga (hired by his family) and Dieudonné Kaluba Dibwa (hired by JED).
