A murder investigation is under way into the death last month of a judge in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) who presided over the embezzlement trial of a top presidential aide, the Congolese Ministry of Justice said on Tuesday.
The high-profile judge, Raphael Yanyi Ovungu, had died in the early hours of May 27 of a haemorrhage caused by head trauma, contradicting a police assertion that the cause of death was cardiac arrest, Congoleses Minister of Justice Celestin Tunda Ya Kasende said.
The death came two days after Yanyi presided over the second hearing in the trial of Vital Kamerhe, the president’s chief of staff and leader of the Union for the Congolese Nation party, and two codefendants who have been accused of embezzling more than US$50 million in state funds from a project to build social housing.
Photo: Reuters
Kamerhe is a key political ally of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi.
The judge died from a hemorrhage resulting from head “trauma” and “blows” received “on a very sensitive part of the skull,” Ya Kasende said, denouncing in the government’s name “an ignominious act.”
The minister cited the conclusions of an autopsy he said was carried out by a Congolese forensic specialist and one of his colleagues at the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo.
The government “calls on the population to stay calm,” he added in the statement.
The verdict in the trial is due to be handed down on Saturday.
Prosecutors recommended on Thursday last week that Kamerhe and his main codefendant, Lebanese contractor Jammal Samih, be sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The defendants are accused of embezzling public funds for a project to build 1,500 prefabricated homes for poor people, under a “100-day” action plan launched by Tshisekedi after he took office.
Kamerhe says he never entered a private contract with Samih.
He said he inherited a contract signed by the former Congolese minister of rural development Justin Bitakwira.
Meanwhile, Bitakwira denied having signed an amendment to a 2018 contract to bring the total cost of the project to US$57 million.
The justice minister added that the executive “shows its support for the entire body of judges.”
The autopsy also revealed the existence of “toxic substances in non-lethal doses” in the judge’s body, the minister’s statement said.
These substances “are not the direct cause of death,” the minister told reporters. “The main cause of death are the blows that he received and especially on a very sensitive part of the skull.”
The trial has resumed with a new presiding judge in the courtyard of the central prison in Kinshasa, where Kamerhe has been held since April 8.
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