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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

DRC: Military Order Court abolished; 70 prisoners granted amnesty

KINSHASA, 28 April 2003 (IRIN) - The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced on Friday that the Cour d'ordre militaire (COM - Military Order Court) had ceased to exist.

The court has been widely criticised by national and international human rights organisations. Amnesty International has reported that the court has failed to meet international fair trial standards or allow appeals to a higher or independent jurisdiction.

In a statement, Justice Minister Ngele Masudi said the mandate of the COM had expired at midnight on Thursday, 30 days following a decree signed by DRC President Joseph Kabila in mid-March 2003.

Speaking to IRIN in November 2002, Masudi said the law was part of an overall restructuring of the military judicial system.

"President Joseph Kabila promised at the beginning of this year to reinstate a normal military judicial structure," he said.

However, state media reported at the time that judgments already rendered by the court would remain valid.

According to the Kinshasa government, the COM is to be replaced by the Haute Cour Militaire, or Military High Court.

The court was instituted in August 1998 when war erupted between the Kinshasa government and rebel movements supported by Rwanda and Uganda. It gained particular notoriety for its use in connection with the assassination of President Laurent-Desire Kabila, who was shot on 16 January by one of his bodyguards.

Meanwhile, 70 prisoners were released on Friday following an amnesty granted to them by DRC President Joseph Kabila.

However, DRC chief public prosecutor Luhonge Kabinda Ngoy, who presided over the liberation of the 70 prisoners, told IRIN that no one sentenced in connection with the trial for the assassination of Laurent-Desire Kabila, including 30 condemned to death, would benefit from this amnesty.

"Among those set free are members of political-religious movements, those who threatened national security, people arrested for political crimes and crimes of opinion, including journalists," Luhonge said.

The decision to grant amnesty to such prisoners came out of the inter-Congolese dialogue, which sought to end more than four years of war in the country.

However, lawyers for those sentenced in connection with the assassination of the elder Kabila said that they consider the public prosecutor's application of the amnesty to be unjust.

"Those condemned for the assassination of Laurent Kabila should also be liberated, as the amnesty concerns, among other things, alleged crimes against state security," Franck Mulenda told IRIN.

Mulenda is the lawyer for Col Eddy Kapend, one of the most prominent individuals sentenced in connection with the murder of the elder Kabila.

Luhonge reported that the freeing of the 70 prisoners was only the beginning of a series of such liberations.

"There are people whose case files have not yet been reviewed, there are military detainees who should also be freed," he said.

Among the most significant prisoners to be released during this amnesty were members of the Bundu Dia Kongo (Congo Kingdom) political-religious movement, whose leader in 2002 proclaimed himself king of the territory of the ancient Kingdom from his home in Bas-Congo Province, southwestern DRC.

Themes: (IRIN) Human Rights

[ENDS]

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