Killer Approached Kabila Calmly, Then Fired, Aide Says

It was no ambush when a trusted bodyguard, in military uniform, entered the “White House” reception room in the presidential palace here Tuesday and shot President Laurent Kabila at point-blank range.

In the first and apparently only eyewitness account of Kabila’s death--which corroborates the official government version--senior economic advisor Emile Christophe Mota told Sunday of how the assassin calmly approached the Congolese leader and pumped three bullets into him as he sat discussing with Mota plans to attend an upcoming Franco-African summit.

The killer, whom local news reports have identified as Rashidi Kasereka, leaned over the president as if he was going to speak to him, recalled Mota, who government officials say is the only person known to have been in the room with Kabila when the attack occurred.

“The president was not surprised” by the intrusion, Mota said. “Usually bodyguards bring in visitors. They come to say there is somebody outside for you.”

Kabila also knew Kasereka well. He had personally recruited the young lieutenant, then in his early 20s, in 1996. Kasereka was among those known as kadogos, or child soldiers. He was from eastern Congo and had participated in Kabila’s revolution to overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko, the country’s longtime dictator.

Kasereka shot Kabila once in the neck and twice in the abdomen. The government announced the president’s death two days after the attack, amid a swirl of confusion surrounding his fate. Officials from foreign governments, including former colonial power Belgium, said that Kabila had died at his palace immediately following the shooting, or soon afterward.

Mota’s account, though allegedly firsthand, leaves many questions unanswered.

It fails to shed light on why a once-honorable bodyguard with no apparent history of mental disorder would suddenly decide to undertake an inevitably suicidal mission alone. It does not explain why several residents in the vicinity of the palace attested to hearing up to 30 minutes of gunfire from within the presidential compound around the time Kabila was known to have been shot. It does not answer why the other bodyguards would have opted to kill the assassin rather than capture him for interrogation.

The body of Kabila, who was 61, arrived Sunday in Kinshasa, the capital, from his home province of Katanga for a memorial service. He will be laid to rest at the state mausoleum Tuesday. His son Joseph, 31, a major general in the army, has been named his successor and will be inaugurated after his father’s burial.

Speaking over the weekend from his temporary residence at Kinshasa’s Grand Hotel, Mota, who was also deputy director of the office of the president, described how he had gone to see Kabila as he did every Tuesday.

Dressed in his typical short-sleeved, green safari suit, the president received Mota at 9 a.m. in the huge red-carpeted reception room in the office section of the president’s compound. During such meetings, various aides and ministers would brief the president on a range of subjects. It was Mota’s task to sit and take notes.

“His mood that day was very relaxed,” said Mota, 44, a former professor of mining economics at the University of Lubumbashi, Kabila’s hometown. The president was happy, he said, because Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi had called to talk to him about the summit. Kadafi had promised to send troops to Congo as part of a stalled U.N. peacekeeping effort to monitor a fragile cease-fire in the conflict between the government and rebel forces.

“We were comprising a list of people to accompany the president to that summit,” Mota recalled. “We were meant to leave the next day at 11 a.m.”

The front door, which led to the president’s private residence across the compound and through which he would usually enter the reception room, stood open, Mota said. The back door was closed. It was 1:45 p.m.

“At that moment, the [bodyguard] came in,” Mota said. “He came in as somebody who was going to talk to the president.”

Instead, Kasereka pulled out his service revolver and shot Kabila in the side of the neck. The president slumped back into his chair. Retreating, his back toward the door, the killer fired two more shots into Kabila’s stomach.

Mota said he jumped at Kasereka and shouted for help. Other bodyguards rushed into the room from the rear door and started shooting at the assailant, he said.

“The first bullet shot him in the leg. He fell,” Mota recounted. “Just to kill him they shot two more times.”

In a country known for its penchant for conspiracy theories, many Congolese view Kasereka’s slaying with suspicion. Why kill a man who might have been able to provide answers about a greater plot?

It is no secret that Kabila had enemies, even among his supposed allies. He was intransigent on everything, foreign observers say. Diplomatic sources say he was a major stumbling block to the implementation of a 1999 peace agreement designed to end the two-year-plus civil conflict, which has sucked in at least six other countries.

It was also known among local political sources and in diplomatic circles that the Angolans, who together with Zimbabwe and Namibia have given the Congolese government military support, were becoming frustrated with Kabila. Angolan UNITA rebels continued to use Congo, which shares 1,000 miles of border with Angola, as a base to launch attacks. The Congolese government was doing little to prevent this.

And Kabila was facing problems within his own ranks. In recent months, the army had grown increasingly restive, with some troops reportedly threatening to revolt over pay demands.

Foreign military analysts confirmed reports of disgruntled senior military personnel, some of whom the president had already demoted or fired.

“It seems on the surface that there might have been a falling-out with his generals,” said Richard Cornwall, a senior analyst at the Pretoria, South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies. He noted that some senior officers wanted Kabila to stop meddling in military affairs. They complained that the president was stealing money intended for new weapons.

Mota dismissed reports implicating army generals in the president’s assassination.

“There was no one [in the room] apart from me,” he said.

Mota explained that the president’s security personnel were very familiar with the president’s routine.

“Bodyguards know the habits of the house,” he said. “It was a premeditated attack, planned for a long time.”

Still, some government detractors believe Kabila was the victim of a poorly executed coup attempt, jointly backed by army officials and certain members of the political hierarchy, who are locked in a struggle for control.

Witnesses have said that in the wee hours Tuesday, Kokolo, the city main’s army camp, was surrounded by at least a battalion of military police. Presidential guards were also present. The barracks were searched, and several soldiers’ weapons were confiscated.

The military camp remained cordoned off until late Tuesday afternoon, with entries and exits barred, according to several passersby.

“I was on my way to work at 7 a.m. I saw the camp was surrounded,” said a local businessman who requested anonymity. “I wondered what was happening.”

Mota said that after the shooting, he left the soldiers to deal with Kasereka and went back into the reception room, where the president lay unconscious but not dead. Dr. Mashako Mamba, the health minister, was already at his side. Kabila was taken by helicopter to a local clinic.

Once the president’s condition stabilized, officials decided to send him by plane to Harare in neighboring Zimbabwe, according to Justice Minister Mwenze Kongolo, who had been waiting inside the compound for an audience with Kabila when he heard the shots.

“When the president called me at 1, I didn’t expect that he would be shot at 3,” Kongolo told a news conference Saturday. “We all thought the president was secure. It was very hard to take, and it still is.”

Government officials say Kabila died at 10 a.m. Thursday. Joseph Kabila was named interim president. A day later, the announcement came that he would be inaugurated after his father’s funeral.

On Sunday, in preparation for a public memorial later in the day, palm fronds were draped as a symbol of mourning across car windshields in Kinshasa and in front of shops and hotels. Thin crowds lined the main road leading from the airport into the city.

State television showed dozens of people wailing as they waited for a glimpse of the funeral procession, but many people expressed little or no emotion.

“I am sad,” said Udaga Baudouin, 47, a businessman. “If you look at his efforts to liberate the Congolese and his program for development, despite its failure, then you can say we really have lost a good man.”

Mota said the president would best be remembered for his desire to unite the nation and his love for peace.

“In three years, he has made a huge impact of awakening the Congolese people to prove to them that they have got a country that is rich and they can work hard to make it prosperous,” Mota said. “The legacy of Kabila is very great.”