Kinshasa – The Democratic Republic of Congo’s intelligence service freed journalist Joseph Kazadi after 22 days in detention on Thursday, a national journalists’ union said.
Intelligence agents arrested Kazadi alongside American journalist Stavros Nicolas Niarchos on July 13 in Lubumbashi, a city in the mineral-rich southeast of the vast central African country.
Agents then held both men in the capital Kinshasa over allegations that they had made unauthorised contact with armed groups.
Niarchos, a 33-year-old freelancer who writes for American magazines The Nation and The New Yorker, was released on July 19 and subsequently left the DRC.
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But Congo’s ANR intelligence agency kept Kazadi in detention, despite dozens of rights groups urging his release.
Kazadi, who writes for a Lubumbashi newspaper, had been working as a fixer for Niarchos.
Gaby Kuba, the president of the DRC’s national press union, told AFP that the ANR had freed Kazadi on Thursday.
He added that neither lawyers nor family members had been allowed to visit Kazadi in detention.
Kazadi told AFP that he “wasn’t tortured, despite the difficult detention conditions”.
The DRC currently ranks 125th out of 180 countries in the press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Unsplash
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