Journalist Tumba Lumembu was freed on November 15, exactly two months after he was arrested on a Kinshasa street, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. A reporter for the newspaper La Tempête des Tropiques, he was abducted on a street in the capital on September 14 by members of the National Intelligence Agency (ANR).
When President Joseph Kabila attended a Francophonie Summit news conference in Montreux on October 24, a RSF representative asked him about the fate of journalists arrested by the ANR. He replied that he was “unaware of a journalist or journalists who have been arrested.”
When Lumembu was finally brought before the prosecutor’s office in Kinshasa on October 21, he appeared to be in very bad shape. Everything indicated that his physical condition was deteriorating rapidly. His psychological condition also seemed to have suffered. RSF had called for him to be hospitalised for medical and psychological treatment.
Charged with “repeatedly insulting the head state” for shouting insulting remarks about President Kabila on the street, Lumembu was taken to the main Kinshasa penitentiary after his appearance.
RSF regarded the circumstances of Lumembu’s arrest and detention as unjustifiable and unacceptable. After being abducted by the ANR on the street, he was held incommunicado for more than two weeks. Neither his family nor his colleagues were notified of his arrest.
On October 8, RSF wrote to interior minister Adolphe Lumanu Mulenda Bwana N’Sefu (who is also deputy prime minister) calling for Lumembu’s release.
