THE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) security agents are guilty of human rights abuses, Amnesty International, has said.

In a report titled ‘Government-backed agents of torture and death in DRC’ and released on Thursday, the UK-based rights watchdog says members of President Joseph Kabila’s Presidential Guard and the Special Services Police committed murder, rape and torture with impunity.

Most of the abuses took place after last year’s presidential elections, it said.

Amnesty says there are credible allegations of extrajudicial executions at the Republican Guards’ base in Camp Tshatshi on the banks of the River Congo.

"Many of these individuals are still in prison without charge or trial. All those interviewed by Amnesty International reported torture and ill-treatment in detention and yet no member of the security forces has been brought to justice.

The climate of intimidation and fear in Kinshasa has intensified as a result,” Erwin van der Borght, Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Programme, said.

The report also highlights ‘grave human rights violations by Kabila’s Republican Guard (Garde Républicaine) in the wake of fighting in Kinshasa in March 2007 between government forces and fighters loyal to Jean-Pierre Bemba.

‘These include the alleged murder of at least 27 detainees in late March 2007, whose bodies were then dumped in the River Congo.’

It says bodies were found in the rapids a short distance downstream from the camp.

The report also documents the leading role taken by the Special Services Police in the arrest and torture of scores of supposed political opponents of President Kabila’s ruling party.
"People have been targeted by the security forces simply because they share the same ethnicity as Jean-Pierre Bemba,” van der Borght, said.

The report says some of these people are still being held, including one woman who says she was raped by numerous policemen and requires medical attention.

Amnesty International (AI) says that far from protecting the people of DR Congo, the state security services remain agents of torture and death.

The report coincided with President Kabila’s visit to US, where he was due to meeting with President George Bush yesterday.
For instance it indicates that one Coquette Nsinga, a 25-year-old student and member of Jean Pierre Bemba’s Mouvement de Liberation du Congo (MLC), was detained by the Special Services police two days after the second round of elections on 31 October 2006, beaten and then raped by five policemen.
‘Denied any medical assistance, she was held for eight months in detention without charge until she appeared before a military tribunal charged with ‘incitement to commit acts contrary to duty or discipline. Her trial is ongoing,’ it adds.

The AI report also talks about a veteran military Colonel, identified as Paul Ndokayi, 61, who was arrested in late November 2006 by Special Services police in Kinshasa, and accused of being a brother of Bemba.

‘Col. Paul Ndokayi endured five hours of continuous torture with ropes, chains and knives. Charged with ‘terrorism’, he has remained in detention for the past 10 months without trial or adequate medical attention.

He has not been given the opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of his detention or bring his torturers to justice,’ it added.

Bemba, one of the DRC’s four vice presidents during the transitional government, is currently in exile in Portugal.

Similar human rights abuses by Congolese armed forces (FARDC) have been widely reported in the eastern Congo especially in North Kivu province, where the army is battling rebel General Laurent Nkunda’s loyalists.

Where as the AI cites the atrocities allegedly committed against supporters of Bemba in Kinshasa, in the country’s North and South Kivu provinces, the alleged primary victims are mainly Congolese Tutsis or Banyamurenge, a tribe which Nkunda belongs to.

President Paul Kagame’s Special Envoy to the Greta Lakes Region, Dr Richard Sezibera, said in a statement on Thursday that FARDC were increasingly working together with forces responsible for the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (FDLR).

This newspaper has also learnt about incidents in which top Congolese army commanders have donated arms, ammunitions and military uniform, to FDLR units in eastern Congo.

In the recent months, Nkunda has arrested scores of FDLR fighting alongside FARDC, with the recent FDLR captives being Major Innocent Nsengiyumva, Warrant Officer II Edward Sesonga, among others.

Both officers were reportedly arrested while fighting alongside FARDC’s sixth Brigade which is commanded by Col. Mushindi.

Nsengiyumva, who is said to have been the field commander of FARDC units at the time of his capture, is the commander of FDLR’s fourth battalion, which on September 30 fired gunshots on a village in Rubavu District in Rwanda.

Nkunda, who on Wednesday promised to surrender 500 of his troops to be reintegrated into the country’s official army as a gesture of goodwill, says he is protecting his tribesmen from attacks by especially FDLR.

The Amnesty International urged Kinshasa to ‘launch an urgent and independent investigation into the systematic detention, torture and murder of alleged political opponents committed by security forces in the DRC’
Van der Borght said it was crucial to reform the police and he called on Kabila "to ensure all government and armed opposition forces are integrated into one politically-neutral and accountable entity that operates within Congolese and international human rights law”.

Additional reporting by Agencies