After being tried during a trial, any legal case can be re-examined as soon as new elements emerge that challenge the decision rendered. This review is part of the so-called extraordinary remedies, although it can be requested only in very limited cases. Thus in view of the new elements in connection with the arrest of Christian Ngoy on September 3, 2020 in Lubumbashi, the damning testimonies of Hergil Ilunga wa Ilunga and Alain Kayeye Longwa on the airwaves of the RFI, the role played by General Zelwa Katanga, says “Djadjidja” all these elements contribute to state crime.
Belgian director Thierry Michel filmed this exceptional trial where military officers judge police chiefs. Denials, lies, falsifications, disappearances of evidence, little by little the trial lays bare all the stratagems established by the police officers to prevent the truth from emerging, to cover up their crimes, to protect those really responsible. In the name of the reason of state?
“DR Congo: the murder of Floribert Chebeya was a state crime and the executioners were protected” according to Colette Braeckman
Recall of facts
Eight police officers have been charged with criminal conspiracy, murder and kidnapping, unlawful possession of weapons of war, desertion and terrorism. This case was tried by the Military Court of Kinshasa-Gombe, at first instance, where a judgment was rendered on June 23, 2011, condemning five defendants, the principal of whom is the Principal Commissioner Daniel Mukalay, deputy chief of the special police services. , recognized as “intellectual author” of the assassination on June 1, 2010 in Kinshasa of Chebeya and who “carried out the operation from start to finish”.
Three other defendants, who were tried in absentia because they were on the run, were also sentenced to the death penalty: Lieutenant-Colonel Christian Ngoy, leader of the elite Simba battalion, the latter’s bodyguard, the adjutant Jacques Mugabo, and Paul Milambwe, the chief of protocol at the general inspectorate (IG) of the police.
Lieutenant Michel Mwila was sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity in the assassination of Chebeya and the arbitrary arrest and detention of Fidèle Bazana.
Against these four accused, the public prosecutor had requested the death penalty. They were also sentenced for the arbitrary arrest and detention of Chebeya’s driver, Fidèle Bazana, who has never been found. The court refused to reclassify the disappearance of the driver as an assassination.
The Appeal Trial
In its verdict on appeal, the High Military Court of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had reduced Colonel Daniel Mukalay to 15 years’ imprisonment since he was a “primary delinquent”, in other words, the perpetrator of a crime. for the first time. And acquitted Captain Michel Mwila.
Yet both were sentenced to death at first instance in 2011 before the appeal trial was suspended for two years.
The reasons for openings
Indeed, in view of the revelations and appearance of new characters then unknown during the first trial in 2011 and on appeal in 2015, the Congolese military justice must reopen the Chebeya case in order to condemn the real culprits and their accomplices. These two policemen Hergil Ilunga wa Ilunga and Alain Kayeye Longwa give details which can only be known by people who were at the scene of the crime; testimonies which agree with a few ready exceptions to that of Paul Milambwe still at large.
There is also the remains of Fidèle Bazana, which has never been found to date and whose two police officers say they know the place where the body was deposited.
Finally, there is the appearance of General Zelwa Katanga, known as “Djadjidja”, owner of the farm where a hole had been dug to deposit the body of Fidèle Bazana.
A lawsuit against the Congolese state
Denials, lies, falsifications, disappearances of evidence, complicity, silence: damning elements against the Congolese state which, with the means at its disposal, did nothing to elucidate the circumstances of two assassinations of Chebeya and Bazana.
How do you explain that Christian Ngoy, convicted in absentia because he was on the run, continued to freely collect his monthly salaries without the State or his superiors realizing it?
Who signed the mission order for police officers Hergil Ilunga wa Ilunga and Alain Kayeye Longwa to move from Kinshasa to Lubumbashi?
Why is it the visibly unguarded General Zelwa Katanga farm that has been chosen to deposit the body of Fidèle Bazana among several land and spaces available to Mitendi?
Why was General John Numbi never appearing even as an informant when the two murders were committed in his neighborhood and his subordinates were implicated?
Kakubi duala
