Two defenders, one appointment
Floribert Chebeya Bahizire was the executive director of La Voix des Sans-Voix, one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's best-known human-rights organizations. Fidèle Bazana Edadi was a colleague and member of the same organization who also drove Chebeya. United Nations officials described Chebeya as a pioneer of the country's human-rights movement; his work addressed abuses by state institutions and security forces.
On June 1, 2010, Chebeya and Bazana went to the headquarters of the national police in Kinshasa. They were expected to meet the police inspector general, John Numbi. The meeting did not take place as publicly scheduled. Both men then disappeared.
A body recovered, a colleague still missing
Chebeya's body was found on June 2 in his vehicle on the outskirts of Kinshasa. Early official suggestions about the circumstances were disputed by his family and human-rights organizations. Bazana was not found. Later testimony in reopened proceedings described both men being restrained and killed, but the absence of Bazana's remains remains an essential and unresolved part of the record.
The United Nations called for a credible investigation within days. Numbi was suspended, while police officers were arrested and prosecuted. The case became a test of whether a military justice system could investigate alleged crimes committed inside the police hierarchy.
The first military trial
The Kinshasa-Gombe Military Court delivered its first judgment on June 23, 2011. Five police officers were convicted. Several defendants were tried in absentia, and three others were acquitted. Contemporary United Nations and independent reporting treated the judgment as an important step while warning that the process had not reached everyone who might bear responsibility.
The appellate phase did not close those gaps. Human-rights organizations criticized the refusal to examine evidence concerning senior command responsibility. The case therefore had convictions, but not a complete judicial account of who ordered the operation or why.
Confessions and a reopened appeal
New testimony prompted authorities to reopen proceedings. Hearings before the High Military Court began in September 2021. Jacques Mugabo acknowledged participating in the operation and described the killing of both victims. Other testimony implicated additional officers and alleged that Numbi ordered the crime. Those claims were evidence presented in court; they were not themselves a final judgment against Numbi.
On May 11, 2022, the High Military Court convicted former colonel Christian Ngoy Kenga Kenga and sentenced him to death, a sentence reported as commuted to life imprisonment. Mugabo received 12 years. Former major Paul Mwilambwe, whose testimony had helped reopen scrutiny of the case, was acquitted. These outcomes superseded simplistic descriptions of every earlier defendant as finally convicted.
The untried command question
In April 2021, the High Military Court formally charged former police chief John Numbi in connection with the murders. By then he had left the country. A 2024 joint statement by FIDH and OMCT said an arrest warrant had been transmitted to Interpol and described him as still on the run. No reliable source reviewed for this publication establishes that he has since been arrested, tried or convicted in this case.
The distinction matters: Ngoy and Mugabo have adjudicated criminal responsibility. Numbi is charged and accused, but untried in the record examined here. Broader political theories and claims about other senior officials also remain allegations unless a court establishes them.
Where the case stands
The two-stage litigation produced real convictions and a judicial account of how the men were killed. It did not recover Bazana's body or resolve the alleged chain of command. The latest specific anniversary assessment located, published in May 2024, still called for Numbi's arrest and for full accountability.
For that reason, the archive records the event as solved in the narrow adjudicative sense while retaining an explicit qualifier: accountability is incomplete. The case is separate from the 2017 murders of UN experts Zaida Catalán and Michael Sharp, the other documented DR Congo file, although both expose persistent questions about state-linked violence and command responsibility.
Questions that remain
- Where are Fidèle Bazana's remains?
- Will John Numbi be brought before a court to answer the charges against him?
- Will further proceedings establish who ordered the killings and the full motive?
- What reparations and disclosure remain outstanding for both families?