Six Congolese were sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday in Kinshasa for the 2021 assassination of the Italian ambassador to the DRC, following a trial before military justice.
The death penalty had been requested by the public prosecutor but was not retained by the military tribunal of the Kinshasa-Gombe garrison, which rendered its decision in open court.
The defense, which had pleaded acquittal, immediately announced to AFP that it was going to appeal. Another trial should therefore take place before a military court.
The verdict was read in the presence of five defendants - André Murwanashaka Mushahara, Issa Seba Nyani, Antoine Bahati Kiboko, Amidu Sembinja Babu alias Samuel Ombeni and Prince Marco Shimiyimana - the sixth being on the run.
They had been on trial since October 12, at the rate of one hearing per week, inside the Ndolo military prison, where they had been brought after their arrest in January 2022 in the east of the country.
Presented as members of a gang of common criminals, highway robbers and kidnappers, they were found guilty of the murder of the Italian ambassador to the DRC, Luca Attanasio, of his Italian bodyguard, the rifleman Vittorio Iacovacci , and a Congolese World Food Program (WFP) driver, Mustapha Milambo , on February 22, 2021.
That day, a convoy of two WFP vehicles, leaving from Goma, capital of North Kivu, fell into an ambush about twenty kilometers from the city, on the outskirts of the Virunga national park.
Renowned for its gorillas, the park is also known to be a haven for armed groups in this region, which has been plagued by violence for nearly 30 years.
According to the account given in court, the convoy was cut in two. The vehicle in which the ambassador is is immobilized, the assailants shoot at the driver, whose body is abandoned on the side of the road. The other occupants of the vehicle are taken hostage and taken to the bush.
"Deprivation of Liberty"
Alerted, the park guards set off in pursuit, violent exchanges of fire ensue. The ambassador's bodyguard was killed instantly, the diplomat, seriously injured, died after being transported to a hospital in Goma.
That same evening, the DRC authorities accused a group of Rwandan Hutu rebels, the FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda), of being responsible for this "terrorist" attack, which the rebels had denied. But already, other sources evoked rather an attempted kidnapping, with demand for ransom in the key, which would have turned out badly.
This version prevailed when, nearly a year later, the Congolese police announced the arrest of criminals, including those who attacked the ambassador's convoy.
The reports drawn up during the police interrogations are unequivocal. But during the trial, the defendants denied everything and claimed that their confessions had been extracted under torture.
They repeated that they had nothing to do with the death of the ambassador and the trial did not bring any new elements to the circumstances, the perpetrators and possible sponsors of the ambush.
No witness or expert was also called to the bar, which the defense deplored, who would have liked to hear the park rangers or a survivor of this tragedy, another WFP employee.
In her pleadings, she considered that the prosecution had proven "neither criminal participation (association of criminals), nor the illegal possession of weapons and munitions of war".
A civil party to the trial, the Republic of Italy, hostile to the death penalty, had for its part requested that the accused be "sentenced to a penalty of deprivation of liberty".
The death penalty is still often requested and imposed in the DRC in cases of national security, but it has not been applied for 20 years and is systematically commuted to life imprisonment.
The tribunal also awarded the Republic of Italy the equivalent in Congolese francs of two million dollars in damages.
29th commemoration of the Rwandan genocide
Open scars, terrifying nightmares, but also the hope of a memory one day appeased: survivors of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide commemorated Friday the 29th anniversary of the tragedy in Paris, a city which will erect a monument in memory the victims.
During a ceremony organized in a pavilion in the Bois de Boulogne, emphasis was placed on the hope embodied by Rwandan youth. A dozen teenagers dressed in black declaimed a moving letter to the grandparents they did not know, massacred in 1994, before giving way to the testimonies of two survivors.
"After a genocide, you find yourself in an impossible emotional void, you can't really mourn your loved ones. And the way they were killed remains in your head," described Esther Mujawayo, 65.
With humor, she said that she was still hanging around, almost 30 years later, "the survivor's complex" and "the survivor's reflex", like that of settling on a chair near the exit: "we don't know Never".
Aimable Kubana, a child at the time of the massacres, remembers him "the militias who sniffed the smell of the blood of the Tutsi in the street", "the bullets which rained down as if they were bees". "Our scars remain open but we are rebuilding," he added, however.
Between April and July 1994, more than 800,000 people according to the UN, mainly members of the Tutsi minority, were massacred in abominable conditions, a genocide orchestrated by the power of the Hutu majority.
A monument to the memory of the victims will be erected on the banks of the Seine in the heart of Paris, announced the Elysée on the occasion of this commemoration, a new memorial step taken by France, of which President Emmanuel Macron recognized " responsibilities" in the 1994 genocide.
The monument will be erected on the left bank not far from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and just opposite, on the opposite bank, the monument in memory of the victims of the Armenian genocide.
It is a question of “paying a national, visible and permanent tribute to the memory of the victims”, indicated the Elysée, which will launch with the city of Paris a call for tenders at the end of May.
"We must look this story in the face, straight in the eye", hammered the Secretary of State Chrysoula Zacharopoulos, estimating, very moved, that this monument would be "a call to awaken all consciences, on what the human being has been able to commit the most atrocious in its history".
The president of the association of survivors Ibuka France, Marcel Kabanda, welcomed a "very important" gesture. "It is a gesture of appeasement of memories between France and Rwanda and of appeasement of the hearts of genocide survivors," he told AFP.
France, which had close relations with the Rwandan regime, has long been accused of "complicity" by Kigali. A commission of historians set up by President Macron concluded in 2021 that France had "heavy and overwhelming responsibilities", while ruling out complicity. This report has allowed an unprecedented rapprochement between Paris and Kigali after decades of tension.
The decision to erect a monument makes it possible to "recognize the extreme importance of the 1994 disaster", estimated for AFP Vincent Duclert, the president of the commission of historians, pointing to "the very symbolic location" at side of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "one of the high places of power, whose responsibility in the genocide is now known".
There is already in Paris a garden of the memory of the genocide in Rwanda in the park of Choisy, in the south of the capital, and a stele in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise (north-east).
Morocco: demonstration in support of Palestine in Rabat
In Morocco, activists and sympathizers of the Palestinian cause demonstrated Friday in front of the Moroccan Parliament in Rabat to denounce the intervention of the Israeli police in the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The normalization of relations between Tel Avi and Rabat became official in December 2020. But Morocco strives to regularly recall its commitment to Palestine.
_"Today, with this new right-wing fascist government, the Palestinian people are facing a very great danger. These people dream of driving out the Palestinians, of continuing this nakba (catastrophe) uninterrupted since 1948, by amplifying it, by driving Palestinians out of Jerusalem and building more and more settlements,” said human rights activist Sion Assidon at the protest in Rabat.
"For years, we have been fighting against normalization, this normalization which has become a military alliance, and we have been saying that it is impossible for the Moroccan people to accept that Morocco make a military alliance with the occupiers of Palestine" has he added.
On Wednesday, Morocco "strongly" condemned Wednesday the intervention of the Israeli police in the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and denounced "the aggression and terror of the faithful in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan" .
In a press release, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, African Cooperation and Moroccans Living Abroad indicated that " the Kingdom of Morocco, of which His Majesty King Mohammed VI chairs the Al Quds Committee, underlines the need to respect the legal, religious and historical status of Al-Quds and the Holy Places and to avoid all practices and violations which are likely to destroy all chances of peace in the region".
Gabon: 21 indictments after the sinking of a ferry
Twenty-one people have been charged in particular with manslaughter in the investigation into the sinking of a mini-ferry which left 30 dead and seven missing a month ago in Gabon, the public prosecutor announced on Saturday. of Libreville.
On March 9, the Esther Miracle , which linked the capital to the oil port of Port-Gentil capsized in the middle of the night and only 124 people out of 161 officially registered occupants could be rescued.
The government of this small Central African country had very quickly mentioned in particular possible serious faults concerning the navigation authorizations issued for this mixed passenger and freight ship of the private company Royal Cost Marine (RCM). It had sunk only ten kilometers from the coast. The survivors and the families of the victims had also questioned the slowness of the relief.
Dozens of people were then questioned in police custody as part of the investigation, including officials from the merchant navy, the Ministry of Transport and RCM executives.
Su_r "48 people referred to the prosecution on April 6 and 7", "21 were charged by an investigating judge with manslaughter, involuntary injury, failure to provide assistance, forgery and use of forgery and endangering life of others "_, said Saturday the procure of the Republic André Patrick Roponat on the public television channel Gabon Première.
“Among them, eight have been placed under a warrant of committal and two are the subject of provisional imprisonment,” he added, without any details on the persons implicated.
The day before, the government had announced the end of the search for the bodies of the missing, almost a month after the tragedy.
“ There are too many negligence, compromises, privileges and small arrangements, the transport sector is particularly concerned, whether maritime, land or rail ”, estimated on March 17 the Prime Minister, Alain- Claude Bilie-By-Nze , promising "administrative sanctions without prejudice to criminal sanctions".
"I also note with regret that the phenomenon of corruption in our administration is becoming worrying," concluded the head of government, the day after the resignation of the Minister of Transport, Brice Paillat.
Tags:
africaaustralia