(JED/IFEX) – Leon Mwamba, Tshikapa correspondent for the Kinshasa-based daily “La Prospérité”, was released from an Agence nationale de renseignements (ANR – national intelligence services) detention cell on 28 June 2005, after being held for 24 hours. Tshikapa is the second largest city of Kasaï Occidental province. Mwamba was reached by phone on 28 June, […]
(JED/IFEX) – Leon Mwamba, Tshikapa correspondent for the Kinshasa-based daily “La Prospérité”, was released from an Agence nationale de renseignements (ANR – national intelligence services) detention cell on 28 June 2005, after being held for 24 hours. Tshikapa is the second largest city of Kasaï Occidental province.
Mwamba was reached by phone on 28 June, following his release, and told JED that ANR agents had frisked him but, not finding anything on him, had undressed him and left him in the holding cell after threatening to kill him.
On 27 June, a judicial police officer had questioned the journalist about an alert published by JED in the 21 June issue of “La Prospérité”. The alert had reported on the ANR arrest and questioning of Laurent Lukengu, a journalist at the Tshikapa-based radio station KHRT (Kasai Horizons), on14 and 15 June.
In a separate case, Casimir Ntwite, Jean Delor Kabamba, and Esaï Musungayi, all journalists and hosts of political news programmes at the Tshikapa-based “Radio Concorde nationale”, “Radio Lumière”, and “Radio Universelle”, respectively, as well as JED correspondent Sosthene Kambidi, were singled out at a 27 June meeting of the provincial security council as “agitators”. The meeting was presided over by Kasaï Occidental Governor Claudel Lubaya.
At the close of the meeting, Tshikapa Mayor Hubert Mbingo said he would issue a warning to radio station managers who broadcast “unauthorised” news or programming.
