DR Congo warns of security threat amid coup plot reports
President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Felix Tshisekedi’s government has “serious evidence” of a national security threat, a spokesman said on national television Tuesday night in the first official comments since reports of a failed coup plot emerged.
Presidential spokesman Tharcisse Kasongo Mwema said that investigations were ongoing.
“No attempt to destabilize our democratic institutions will be tolerated,” Kasongo said.
FILE PHOTO: Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi. /Getty Images
Presidential security adviser Francois Beya was arrested by forces from the country’s National Intelligence Agency last Saturday on suspicion of undermining state security, according to a report from AP.
The reports were enough to prompt members of the president’s political party to demonstrate in front of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party headquarters in Kinshasa in a show of support for Tshisekedi.
Felix Tshisekedi won the presidential election in December 2018 after then-President Joseph Kabila did not run for a third term.
It was the country’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.
