(JED/IFEX) – Journalist Gisèle Ossambia and publication director Kabeya Pindi Pasi, both with the Kinshasa-based bi-weekly newspaper “Numerica”, have been ordered to appear before a Kinshasa/Gombe court on 10 January 2003 to answer charges of having directed “harmful accusations” and “insults” against Agathe Mulimbi, president of the National Bureau for the Promotion of Social Action […]
(JED/IFEX) – Journalist Gisèle Ossambia and publication director Kabeya Pindi Pasi, both with the Kinshasa-based bi-weekly newspaper “Numerica”, have been ordered to appear before a Kinshasa/Gombe court on 10 January 2003 to answer charges of having directed “harmful accusations” and “insults” against Agathe Mulimbi, president of the National Bureau for the Promotion of Social Action (Bureau national de promotion des actions sociales, BNPS), a government department accountable to the president. The BNPS was created by now-deceased former president Laurent-Désiré Kabila.
In an article published in its 24 December 2002 edition, “Numerica” suggested that Mulimbi had cancelled a 1997 lottery and stolen the prizes that were to have been on offer. The newspaper also described Mulimbi as being one of “the deceitful looters who get rich on the backs of the Congolese people.” The incriminating article was written by Ossambia.
Mulimbi has asked the court to sentence the journalist to “a heavy penalty, in accordance with the law, and order her immediate arrest.” The plaintiff is also seeking two million US dollars in damages and interest from the journalist and Pasi, her superior.
Ossambia told JED that in an earlier exchange, Mulimbi’s lawyer, Audifax Mutiri Muyongo, had made reference to her ethnic background, threatened her, and warned her that she had targeted one of the country’s “untouchables” in her article.
