DRC: Trial of lamp workers following the Goma massacre

Alongside the recall of the military governor of North Kivu to Kinshasa for consultation, the suspension of two senior officers of the Congolese National Police and their recall to Kinshasa (senior senior commissioner José Bongo Wifema, Commander in charge of City Operations Goma, and Senior Commissioner Martin Luna Kimanga, Commander in charge of Intelligence in the city of Goma), the North Kivu Military Court began this Tuesday a flagrant trial against the soldiers alleged to be perpetrators of the August 30 massacres.

Six defendants appeared before the judges, a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel and 4 soldiers.

For the public prosecutor, who also faced a delegation composed in particular of the Ministers of Defense and the Interior returning from Kinshasa: “ LThe acts committed by the group of soldiers and senior officers were carried out in a concerted manner and on their initiative. It was not a state action.”

In other words, these six defendants appear to be the fuses who will have to take responsibility for this massacre by creating a smokescreen which will allow the entire military and political hierarchy of Kinshasa to be spared… On the condition, obviously, of accept that six lamp players are capable of mobilizing the Presidential Guard and launching a deadly offensive on Goma…

“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music”, according to an adage attributed to Georges Clémenceau, President of the council French from 1906 to 1909 then from 1917 to 1920.