DRC: Police release journalist in connection to assassination of former minister C. Okende

Peter Tsiani, Director General and journalist of Perfect Tv, a private television in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was released Saturday August 19 after a brief detention in police custody in connection to probe into the assassination of Cherubin Okende, a former transport minister and ally of presidential candidate Moise Katumbi. C. Okende was found dead in capital Kinshasa in July 2023.

Security forces raided the television station Friday and arrested Tsiani, his lawyer Hervé Diakiese told media.

Tsiani was brought in the premises of the National police directorate in Kinshasa and was interrogated by an investigating Committee probing the assassination of Okende.

The former Transport minister was found showered with bullets in his car in the capital. The 61-year man was spokesman for Ensemble pour la République, the party of Moise Katumbi, a leading opposition politician who is set to contest the presidential election in December 2023.

“It’s a political assassination,” Katumbi told French radio broadcaster RFI, without elaborating. “They want to reduce us to silence,” he said, calling for independent investigations into what he described as an “odious crime.”

The office of President Félix Tshisekedi said Okende had died in “tragic circumstances” and it urged an investigation to “shed full light on the matter and punish those responsible for this despicable act.”

Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya likewise tweeted that “the government was shocked to learn of the assassination” and that it had ordered a probe.