A prominent DR Congo journalist was sentenced Monday to six months in prison for allegedly incriminating military intelligence in the murder of an opposition politician.
Stanis Bujakera, 33, has been jailed since September over an article in Jeune Afrique magazine that suggested Congolese military intelligence operatives had killed opposition politician Cherubin Okende the month before.
The article — which was unsigned — was based on an alleged confidential memo from a separate intelligence agency. Congolese authorities have said the memo is a fake.
A Kinshasa court found Bujakera guilty on charges including forgery and “spreading false rumours”, and ordered the six-month sentence along with a fine of one million Congolese francs ($400).
Prosecutors had asked Bujakera to be jailed for 20 years.
His arrest followed a Jeune Afrique article published in late August, which suggested that Congolese military intelligence had killed Okende the month before.
Okende, a former minister and spokesman for the opposition party Ensemble Pour la Republique (“United for the Republic”), disappeared on July 12 last year. His bullet-riddled body was found in his car in Kinshasa the following day.
The prosecutor’s office announced on February 29 that an autopsy found Okende had committed suicide, an assertion his party called a “refusal of justice”.
The trial comes amid rising political tensions in the DRC ahead of a presidential and parliamentary election scheduled for December 20.
Incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi, who came to office in 2019, is running for a second term.