DR Congo president's rival charged with hiring mercenaries

May 20, 2016

No date was set for the trial of Katumbi, millionaire owner of a prestigious football club and former governor of mineral-rich Katanga province.

KINSHASA - Powerful DR Congo opposition figure Moise Katumbi, who is planning to run for the presidency, is to be put on trial for threatening state security, officials said Thursday.

"Katumbi Chapwe Moise... has been charged with threatening the internal and external security of the State... and faces a provisional arrest warrant," the state prosecutor's office said in a statement.

No date was set for the trial of Katumbi, millionaire owner of a prestigious football club and former governor of mineral-rich Katanga province.

The charges carry the death penalty, which has been systematically commuted to life since Democratic Republic of Congo suspended capital punishment, Kinshasa University law professor Sam Bokolombe told AFP.

The news comes amid mounting domestic and international concern that President Joseph Kabila will delay elections due to be held late this year when his second five-year mandate ends.

Katumbi, 51, is Kabila's leading rival for the country's top job after recently announcing plans to stand against the long-serving head of state.

Just as he announced the plan to run for president, judicial authorities on May 4 opened an inquiry alleging that he had hired foreign mercenaries.

Katumbi said the case, which followed the arrest of four of his bodyguards, including an American, was politically motivated.

Asked to comment on Katumbi's immediate fate, government spokesman Lambert Mende told AFP that "he could either be placed under house arrest or jailed."

'Grotesque lies'

Sources close to the wealthy businessman and owner of the prestigious Tout-Puissant Mazembe football club, said Katumbi was currently in hospital in the country's second city Lubumbashi.

He has said he was beaten up by police at the Lubumbashi law courts on May 13, when fighting broke out between thousands of his supporters and police as he was due to attend a third hearing in the case.

Police have categorically denied the allegations.

A judicial source said Katumbi could be authorised to leave the country for medical treatment pending the trial.

If found guilty in a criminal case, he would be barred from standing for the presidency. Katumbi has denied the allegations of hiring mercenaries as "grotesque lies."

The opposition claims Kabila, in power since 2001, plans to extend his rule, and last week the Constitutional Court ruled he could stay in office beyond 2016 without being re-elected.

Human Rights Watch has slammed the case as "targeted actions against a presidential aspirant and close supporters".

Katumbi was an ally of Kabila's but broke with him in September after the president announced he would carve up DR Congo's provinces, including Katanga, into smaller entities.

Danae Dholakia, Britain's special envoy to Africa's Great Lakes region, said last week that she hoped the allegations against Katumbi were not "an extension of restrictions" on political freedoms in DRC.

"There are lots of red flashing lights," she said.

Kabila's supporters want the presidential elections delayed for two to four years on the grounds of alleged logistical and financial difficulties.

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