DRC DENIES FAMILIES ACCESS TO MEN CONDEMNED FOR KABILA MURDER

"We have been prohibited from having any contact with our husbands," said Chantale Oya, wife of Col Eddy Kapend, Kabila´s former aide-de-camp who, along with 29 others, was sentenced to death in connection with Kabila´s assassination.
“The authorities of the Centre penitentiaire de reeducation de Kinshasa [CPRK, the capital´s central prison] will not allow us to bring food or medicine to our husbands,” she added. “We are not even allowed to see them. We´re not even sure if they´re still in prison or alive."
Thirty people were sentenced to death on 7 January in a trial of 135 people accused of involvement in the murder of Kabila. Twenty of them are in prison, while 10 others, tried in absentia, are outside the country. Twenty-seven others were sentenced to life in prison, 41 were acquitted while the remainder received sentenced ranging from two to 20 years of imprisonment.
On Wednesday the Kinshasa government issued a warrant for the arrest of Xavier Chiribanya, who has just been named as governor of the eastern province of South Kivu by the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD).
Chiribanya was one of the 30 sentenced to death in absentia for the attempt on Kabila´s life, for the plot aimed at toppling the institutions of the Republic, for the assassination of the head of state and, finally, for treason by complicity.
However, the RCD, which controls the eastern half of the vast country, said that it recognises neither the warrant from Kinshasa nor the death sentence hanging over the new governor´s head.