13 June 2007
Serge Maheshe
Shooting
Serge Maheshe, news editor of the Bukavu office of UN-backed Radio Okapi, was shot by gunmen as he was about to get into his UN-marked car in a residential neighbourhood.
According to initial reports, Maheshe was killed by two or three men in civilian dress carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles as he emerged from a friend’s home in a residential district of Bukavu at about 9 p.m.
Accompanied by his friend, Maheshe was about to get into one of the UN-marked vehicles that are used by the station’s journalists when the men ordered them to put their hands in the air. One of the gunmen asked which of them was Maheshe.
He identified himself.
After telling the friend to leave, and gunmen told Maheshe to sit on the ground beside the car.
Then one of them shot him three times in the chest. Aged 31, Maheshe had worked for Radio Okapi since 2002 and had become one of the region’s leading journalists. Honest, independent and very professional, he had covered all of the crises in the eastern part of the country since the peace accord in 2002, including last year’s general elections.
The joint creation of the Swiss foundation Hirondelle and the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), Radio Okapi has more listeners than any other station in the country.
