Republic of the Congo: imagining another future

Christian Loubassou. ACAT Congo has the right to visit all detention facilities in the country. We provide humanitarian assistance to all prisoners by distributing essential products. We also aim to combat the excessive use of pre-trial detention. The first thing we do when we visit a detention facility is interview all incarcerated people. We then identify those who are being inappropriately held on remand and, with the help of dedicated specialist lawyers, arrange for the monitoring of these cases.

Our monitoring visits have allowed us to make a number of observations. Firstly, most jails are generally overcrowded and have a high proportion of people in pre-trial detention. There are always more remand prisoners than convicted. For this reason, ACAT Congo is working to combat excessive pre-trial detention. The goal is to ensure that all those imprisoned can be brought to trial. In 2021, more than 106 court rulings were obtained in this way.

Our second observation was that detention conditions are completely unacceptable. Food is insufficient, overcrowding is extreme and healthcare is virtually non-existent. In our country, sick prisoners are abandoned, forced to treat themselves with whatever they have to hand.

CL. Police stations and gendarmeries are full of suspects whose cases are taking a long time to be processed by judicial police officers. Most of the people we interviewed were held in police stations over the legal time limit allowed for police custody. Our judicial procedure code stipulates that police custody must not exceed 72 hours. This can be extended by 48 hours by the public prosecutor. In reality, files are often slow to be forwarded and they build up. As a result, police stations and gendarmeries are overcrowded.

Several factors contribute to this situation. Judicial police officers are often unaware of the provisions governing police custody and they do not care if they do not comply. In addition, police stations and gendarmeries are not subject to any scrutiny by the public prosecutor or the general police inspectorate.

Young people in conflict with the law face additional difficulties. They are often questioned by the police in connection with crimes and are over-represented in police stations. Minors are subject to specific procedures because of their age. These procedures are even more dysfunctional than those in place for adults and are either non-existent or very slow. Action must be taken to resolve this issue.

CL. We believe that there are a number of ways in which we can achieve this. Firstly, it is essential to make existing legal texts on prisoners’ rights more accessible. We need to make the Penitentiary Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure more accessible to prison and judicial staff, as well as to law enforcement officers. It is also essential that police stations, investigating magistrates’ offices and prisons are subject to inspections. This will put us in a better position to identify violations and either punish perpetrators or force them to rectify their mistakes.

We need to ask the government to rely more on NGOs to monitor detention facilities, such as public security posts and prisons. Young people, among others, need more help and support, particularly from our specialist lawyers. The aim is to be able to monitor and have information on the cases of all those on remand, particularly those who have not had access to a lawyer.

We also continue to push for the government to introduce a National Preventive Mechanism. The Congo has signed, but not yet ratified, the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), which provides for the establishment of such a mechanism. The President of the Republic has promulgated the instruments of ratification of this protocol, but there has been a delay in depositing them with the UN secretariat. We believe that such a mechanism will make it easier to carry out inspections in various places of detention: public security police facilities, police stations and jails.

Finally, there is the question of the reforms. The revision of the Penal Code, initiated in 2008, has still not been completed. The Penitentiary Code was promulgated a short time ago, but it is still not being applied properly, as it requires the implementation of numerous measures. There have certainly been advances, but they are not yet really noticeable. Impunity persists. Although violations of the rights of prisoners and their needs have now been identified, there is still no process in place to facilitate stricter monitoring of detention facilities in our country.