WASHINGTON (AP) – An American security contractor is accusing two top-ranking Congolese officials of ordering his detention and torture, declaring in a lawsuit that they demanded he confess falsely to being part of a plot to overthrow the country’s government.
Darryl Lewis, an Air Force veteran, said in an Associated Press interview this week that he was illegally held in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, for nearly six weeks and interrogated for as many as 16 hours a day by members of Congo’s national intelligence agency.
Congo’s intelligence chief, Kalev Mutond, and Congolese Justice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba, “acted in concert” to have him detained, tortured and “threatened with indefinite imprisonment on false charges,” according to the lawsuit, filed July 29 in federal court in Washington.
“I feared for my life from the day they captured me,” Lewis, 48, said. He said he never confessed.
Congo’s ambassador, Francois Balumuene, said in a statement Thursday that Lewis was detained because he did not have the proper work permit. He denied Lewis had been mistreated and called his lawsuit “unsubstantiated allegations.”