Loud Whispers

AFP reported that the breakout occurred at about 1:00 am leading to the escape of 68 prisoners out of the 74 prisoners housed in the dilapidated prison in Kasangulu.

The town lies about 40 kilometres (25 miles) southwest of the capital Kinshasa in the Kongo Central province.

Ten of the escaped prisoners were quickly “recaptured,” said Vuemba who criticised the inmates’ living conditions as deplorable.

A local human rights activist who visited the prison on Friday said she had seen only four people there, two of them women.

It was not immediately clear how the prisoners escaped, with police saying investigators had been dispatched from Kinshasa.

The incident occurred just two days after rebels from an outlawed political-religious group attacked Kinshasa’s central prison.

The pre-dawn attack was carried out by followers of Bundu Dia Kongo (BDK), a secessionist rebel group that rejects Kinshasa’s authority and wants to set up a parallel state in the west of the country.

Government sources said at least eight people died during exchanges of gunfire in the assault to free Ne Muanda Nsemi, an MP who is the spiritual leader of the BDK — a group based in Kongo Central.

Nsemi was arrested in early March following a violent two-week siege of his home. The government has blamed his followers for a string of violent attacks since the start of the year.

By Wednesday evening, more than 4,000 of the 8,000 prisoners held in Makala prison were still missing, while 86 escapees had been returned, prisoner sources said.

There was no immediate suggestion the two jail breaks were related.