A witness in the trial of eight police officers accused of the murder of a Democratic Republic of Congo human rights activist on Thursday said locals told him they saw officers transport and then abandon Floribert Chebeya's body.

Mbala Ndonzvao told the court that local people, whom he has been unable to trace, told him they saw two police jeeps arrive near their homes on the outskirts of Kinshasa accompanied by Chebeya's car.

The vehicles stopped at the side of the road and the person driving the murdered activist's car got out and got into one of the police jeeps. The jeeps then set off towards Kinshasa, he added.

Chebeya, 47, who headed the prominent human rights organisation La Voix des Sans Voix (VSV - The Voice of the Voiceless), disappeared on June 1 after going to police headquarters in Kinshasa.

He was found dead the following day, tied up on the back seat of the car while his driver, Fidele Bazana, is still missing.

Chebeya, born in 1963, founded VSV in 1983 and began to denounce injustice, the absence of civil liberties and the persecution of opposition figures under the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko.

source: AFP