Minembwe: Arrest of a sixty-year-old following the missing of a drone-FARDC

Zachée Runezerwa (65 years old) is detained in a Congolese army’s container since October 22 after his arrest at Runundu-Minembwe in the territory of Fizi, in South Kivu province, eastern DRC, the same day. The Congolese soldiers allege the drone disappeared from old man’s land.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

Runezerwa’s land, is at around 7 kilometers away from a base of the FARDC (Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo) of Madegu. On Tuesday, October 22, 2024, a soldier sent a drone into the sky of the region. It did not return to the base but ended up on a farm of the teacher Zachée Runezerwa, according to residents. Sources close to the FARDC in South Kivu speak of an error on the part of the soldier who had programmed the drone.

“This soldier was drunk. He directed the drone well but forgot to return it.
It is unacceptable that a citizen is arrested for a fault he did not commit,” said a source close to the Congolese army in this region.

Local civil society condemns the detention of the citizen.

“Instead of honoring his oath to protect the population and its property, Colonel Lwamba Jean Pierre, commander of the 21st brigade deployed in the heights of Fizi and Mwenga (Itombwe) in the south of the province of South Kivu, has oriented himself towards a mission totally different from that one. “He persecutes the civilian population through arbitrary arrests, torture, harassment,” deplores a civil society leader in Minembwe. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He says that on Tuesday, several FARDC elements carried out searches in houses before ransacking fields of crops. Civil society is asking the military hierarchy to replace this colonel with another “responsible” officer.
https://www.sosmediasburundi.org/2023/07/10/__trashed-3/

Military sources say that the drone was recovered by fighters from the local armed group Twirwaneho, made up of members of the Banyamulenge community. Zachée Runezerwa also belongs to this community of cow owners persecuted in Congo.

——-

Illustration photo: the Minembwe center (SOS Médias Burundi)