Congolese journalist Stanis Bujakera was released on the night of Tuesday March 19 from the central prison of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where he had been detained since September, one of his colleagues announced. Correspondent for the magazine Jeune Afrique and the Reuters press agency, Stanis Bujakera was sentenced on Monday to six months in prison, a sentence already served under preventive detention, and to a fine of one million Congolese francs (368 euros).
“The public prosecutor has withdrawn his appeal, there [Stanis] is free, he is in the car, I am taking him home,” Patient Ligodi, the head of the online newspaper Actualite, told Agence France-Presse. cd, of which Mr. Bujakera is also deputy publishing director. Earlier, Mr. Ligodi and the journalist’s lawyer had said that the latter would remain in prison pending his appeal trial, according to a court decision.
Arrested on September 8, Stanis Bujakera was accused, among other things, of having produced in an article which did not bear his signature, a “false report” incriminating military intelligence in the death of Chérubin Okende, a former minister and deputy of opposition, found dead in his car, his body bloodied, on July 13, 2023.
Twenty years in prison required
On February 29, 2024, the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation announced that the “autopsy” and “expertise” had established that the opponent Chérubin Okende had “committed suicide”, far from the assassination theory put forward by his party which was immediately indignant at a “denial of justice”.
At the end of a trial that began in October, with a hearing every two or three weeks, Stanis Bujakera was found guilty of all the offenses brought against him. The judicial authorities considered that the journalist intended to discredit the institutions of the DRC. But the court sentenced him to six months in prison, and not the twenty years of detention required by the prosecution.
The announcement of Mr. Bujakera’s conviction sparked reactions among media defense organizations. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomed on Monday “the soon-to-be-found freedom of Stanis” by recalling that, according to it, “he should never have been arrested, prosecuted and convicted” in what it considers to be “a case (… ) fabricated against him”.
