About IFEX:

News by region:

IFEX Campaigns and Advocacy:

IFEX Email Products:

Opportunities and assistance:

Alert

JED denounces journalist's arrest and detention by Tshikapa court

(JED/IFEX) - Journalist Pierre-Sosthene Kambidi, with private radio station Concorde FM, broadcast from Tshikapa, the second largest city in West Kasai province (in central DRC), and correspondent for Journaliste en danger (JED) from the same city, was arrested on 8 June 2006. He was placed in temporary detention by the Peace Tribunal of Tshikapa for "insulting" Pierre Kidogo, commander of the mobile intervention squad of the Congolese national police.

During a radio show on 7 June, Kambidi denounced the Tshikapa mobile intervention squad, which had arrested, manhandled and beat a lawyer in public over a personal affair. "Kambidi never mentioned, much less insulted, the commander who is pursuing him. He merely denounced the police harassment and humiliation the victim had been subjected to by this mobile intervention squad," declared the journalist's lawyer, Dieudonné Tieme, to JED.

JED is astonished that the journalist has been detained since the court had initially returned the file to the public prosecutor's department for further information, believing the journalist's lawyer's version of the events. This procedure demonstrates the local politico-military authorities' cavalier disregard for the rule of law". JED calls for the immediate release of Kambidi.