Rights groups demand release of DRC journalist Sosthene Kambidi
Al Jazeera
Reporter is accused of ‘terrorism’ for possession of video showing 2017 killing of two UN monitors.
Rights groups have called on military authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to release a journalist arrested on “terrorism” charges for the possession of a video showing the killing of two United Nations sanctions monitors in 2017.
Sosthene Kambidi, who works for Congolese news site Actualite.cd and has also collaborated with international news agencies, was arrested by the army prosecutor at a hotel in the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, on Monday night, he said in a WhatsApp message to a Radio France International (RFI) journalist, which was shared with Reuters news agency.
Kambidi contributed to an investigation by RFI and Reuters in December 2017 which revealed that state security agents had helped plan a trip by the two UN monitors to investigate reports of atrocities during an armed conflict in a rural part of DRC’s Kasai region.