Two Congolese army soldiers, Sgt. Paluku Selemani Ngewese and 2nd Lt. Songa Safari, were sentenced to death by a military court in Béni, in the eastern province of Nord-Kivu, on 17 April for the fatal shooting of cameraman Patient Chebeya Bankome just 12 days earlier. A third defendant, Capt. Bisimwa, was sentenced to five years in prison for “disobeying orders.”
“This murder investigation was completed in an extremely short period of time,” Reporters Without Borders. “For such a serious sentence as the death penalty, the Congolese authorities should make sure the persons they arrested really did do it. We call for a new investigation under the authority of a civilian court to ensure that the initial investigation was sufficiently thorough.”
Bankome was gunned down outside his Béni home on the evening of 5 April in front of his wife, who was the main witness at the trial. The press freedom organisation Journalist in Danger (JED) reports that she told the military tribunal that the physical appearance of the three defendants did not match that of the three men she saw shoot her husband.
Source: Reporters without Borders (RSF)
