Families sue to find fugitive in slain DR Congo activist case
Dakar (AFP) - Lawyers for the victims' families have filed a lawsuit in Senegal to force authorities to arrest a fugitive sentenced to death for the murder of a human rights activist and his driver in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Floribert Chebeya, 47, was found dead in his car after a meeting at a police station in Kinshasa exactly four years ago. His driver Fidele Bazana, who is presumed dead, vanished completely.
The officer who was in charge of security for the Kinshasa police station where Chebeya was killed, Paul Mwilambwe, has been on the run and was one of a number of officers sentenced to death over the murder.
"We are going through the Senegalese courts because Paul Mwilambwe is in Senegal and, under Senegalese law, the country's courts have jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute these crimes in which Paul Mwilambwe appears to be involved," said Patrick Baudouin of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
Lawyers for the families of Chebeya and Bazana as well as the FIDH filed a criminal complaint in January against Mwilambwe, taking advantage of a 2007 law allowing Senegal to try suspects of torture committed in other countries.
But they say the complaint has been ignored, forcing them to launch a civil action.
"This lawsuit constitutes for us a great hope in truth and justice that we have been denied in the Congo... I want to know where the body of my husband is and I want to bury him with dignity," Bazana's wife, Marie-Jose, was quoted as saying in a joint statement released by FIDH and several other African rights groups.
If the action is successful in forcing a prosecution it will be the first by the authorities in Dakar on crimes committed outside Senegal since the arrest of Chad's former dictator Hissene Habre in July last year, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Back on June 1, 2010, prosecutors said Chebeya had been summoned to the station in Kinshasa by then chief of national police General John Numbi, who later denied setting up any meeting but was suspended from his duties over the affair.
Chebeya was found dead on the back seat of his car a day later, with his wrists showing signs of having been handcuffed, sparking an international outcry and the launch of an investigation which resulted in several arrests.
A military court in Kinshasa convicted the deputy chief of police special services, Colonel Daniel Mukalay, in 2011 and sentenced him to death, together with Mwilambwe and two other officers tried in their absence because they had fled.
The condemned men have appealed and have been on trial again since June 2012 but proceedings were suspended in May last year pending a ruling by the constitutional court on a claim of irregularities by civil parties in the case.