Three Congolese doctors have been detained for allegedly planning a deadly attack on a hospital in which a World Health Organization (WHO) doctor who was killed.
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Cameroonian doctor Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung was shot dead on April 19 in an attack on a hospital in the eastern city of Butembo, one of the epicenters of the year-long Ebola outbreak.
Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Baptiste Kumbu Ngoma told AFP that the arrested doctors will be prosecuted for terrorism and criminal conspiracy.
Kumbu said three had been arrested, while the fourth was at large. He provided no further details about when or where they were detained or what their motive might have been.
The Butembo branch of Congo’s National Doctor’s Council said in a statement that it was ‘indignant’ over the arrests which were crippling vital medical services in the area.
It said the doctors should be released on bail and that medical personnel would launch a strike within 48 hours if they were not.
However, the military prosecutor dismissed their demands as “out of the question”.
“It’s a delicate situation. As a man has died, we absolutely have now the truth about what happened,” the coordinator of the fight against Ebola in the DR Congo, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, told AFP.
Kumbu said a total of 54 people are currently under arrest in connection with attacks on Ebola treatment centers.
