Johannesburg THE trial of the alleged killers of President Laurent-Desiré Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo ended this week with observers dismissing proceedings as a brutal and shambolic farce.
The trial, which began in March last year before a military tribunal, was so chaotic that it is uncertain how many of the 135 defendants have been sentenced to death. Some reports said 30; others 26. Furthermore, 10 people, thought to be abroad, were tried in absentia. The human rights body, Amnesty International, has urged Kabila's son, Joseph, who took over as president after his father was gunned down in January 2001, to commute the sentences. The defendants were not given adequate time to prepare their defence, and their judges were all members of the military or the security services, with little or no legal training. The defendants also have no right of appeal and are therefore at the mercy of presidential clemency. But Kabila's spokesman indicated that Kabila had no desire to overturn the sentence of Colonel Eddy Irung Kapend, his father's former aide. By the time the trial started, most of the defendants had spent more than a year behind bars. The trial failed to make any sense of the killing - or to reveal details of a wider coup plot alleged by an earlier inquiry. The court nevertheless ruled that Kapend masterminded the coup. Kapend came to the fore in the aftermath of Kabila's assassination and was among those who approved the slain leader's son as president. Within weeks, though, Kapend was placed under house arrest as the roundup of suspects, those who had happened to witness the killing, began.
