Facts
Paul Mwilambwe was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1973. He became commander of the Congolese National Police (PNC) in 2010. Mwilambwe was responsible for the safety of General John Numbi, former head of the PNC.
On 2 June 2010, Floribert Chebeya, General Director of the NGO Voices of the Voiceless (VSV), a human rights organization, and his colleague and driver, Fidèle Bazana, also a member of the organization, went to the premises of the PNC to meet Numbi. On the following day, Chebeya was found dead in his car while Bazana was missing.
Numbi, with help of Mwilambwe and seven other police officers, allegedly tortured and murdered Chebeya and Bazana in a police station on 2 June 2010. Shortly after these events, Mwilambwe moved to Belgium, where he lived in hiding for many months. He then moved to Senegal.
Procedure
On 2 June 2014, the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) and families of the victims filed a criminal complaint as civil parties before Senegalese courts (Mwilambwe was at that time residing in Senegal). The plaintiffs testified before the judge investigating the case in August 2014. Mwilambwe was indicted on 8 January 2015 and placed under judicial supervision.
In June 2015, Guylain Bazana, the son of Fidèle Bazana, was questioned by the investigative judge as a civil party.
Proceedings were launched in DRC at the time of the events. On 23 June 2011, five PNC officers were convicted, four of whom were sentenced to death and the fifth to life imprisonment. In 2015, the Kinshasa Military High Court acquitted on appeal the four defendants sentenced to death and reduced the life sentence of the fifth defendant to 15 years in prison. High-level suspects including Mwilambwe were not targeted by these proceedings.
In April 2017, lawyers representing the civil parties in the Senegalese investigation filed a brief with the investigative judge in Senegal requesting that several pieces of evidence from the DRC proceedings be added to the case file.
Mwilambwe flew to Belgium in 2020 and then went back to DRC in 2021.