•  Home
•  Who We Are
•  What We Do
•  Media Centre
•  Publications
•  Humphrey Award
•  Reference
•  Links
•  Contact Us

Urgent Appeal: Stop the Execution of 30 Defendants in Democratic Republic of Congo

All information indicates that the defendants were denied a fair trial.

MONTREAL – January 10, 2003 – Canada must urge the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo Joseph Kabila to commute the sentences of 30 defendants who were condemned to death on Tuesday in Kinshasa, for their alleged role in the assassination of his father in January 2001.

"Canada must join Belgium and the European Union which have already expressed their opposition to these executions. All information indicates that these 30 defendants were denied a fair trial. To execute them would violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," said the President of Rights & Democracy, Jean-Louis Roy.

Mr. Roy pointed specifically to the case of Dojo Mukanirwa, 26, who was already imprisoned in Lubumbashi, the capital of Katanga, when the President was assassinated on January 16, 2001 in Kinshasa. Mr. Mukanirwa learned that he had been charged only two days before the beginning of the trial in March 2002.

In a letter to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, Bill Graham, Mr. Roy said that the 30 who have been sentenced to death have no right to appeal the Military Court of Kinshasa's decision. Their only recourse is a presidential prerogative to commute the sentences.

Mr. Roy told the minister that the defendants were not given adequate time to prepare their defence since most of them met their lawyers for the first time on the opening day of the trial. The RDC government has adopted a decree abolishing the military court which sentenced the 30 to death but the decision has not yet come into force.

President Joseph Kabila pledged before the United Nations in March 2001 to maintain the moratorium against the death penalty until Parliament could debate the issue. However the debate was never held and the moratorium was lifted on September 23, 2002.

Rights & Democracy believes that the execution of the 30 accused would exacerbate the tensions in the country which signed a peace accord on December 17, 2002 in Pretoria, with the rebel factions. The government must do everything it can to defuse conflict and violence, Mr. Roy said.

According to Amnesty International, more than 200 defendants have been executed since the former Za?re became the Democratic Republic of Congo in May 1997.