With UN support, 27 Judicial Police officers take their oath of office in Uvira

With UN support, 27 Judicial Police officers take their oath of office in Uvira
19 Jul 2016

With UN support, 27 Judicial Police officers take their oath of office in Uvira

Uvira, 18 July 2016 – The newly sworn-in Judiciary Police officers are those who received the training organized early this month by the Office of Public Prosecution at the High Court of Uvira together with the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) of MONUSCO-Uvira. The training included inter alia knowledge of the legislation on judicial police, special criminal law and techniques for the drawing up of records, in Uvira and Luvungi, 58 kilometers from Uvira. « The aim of this capacity building is to provide judicial police officers with pertinent tools to allow them to carry out their work effectively,” the UNJHRO said.  Of the 44 officers who attended the two training sessions (In Uvira and Luvungi), only 27 (including one female officer) took their oath on Saturday, 16 July 2016 in Uvira, before the Public Prosecutor.  The UNJHRO of MONUSCO-Uvira provided financial, technical and logistical support to the Public Prosecution Office of Uvira for this training to materialize. 

A large delegation from MONUSCO-Uvira led by the Head of the sub-Office took part in the ceremony. In his speech, the Head of the sub-Office, Ould Mohamed El Hacen, urged the newly sworn-in police officers “to put into practice the training they received to ensure the proper administration of justice in Congo”.   For his part, the Public Prosecutor of the High Court of Uvira, Déogratias Abedi Sokofu, invited his collaborators to demonstrate professionalism in the performance of their duties. He encouraged them to abandon the practice of torture as a method for discovering the truth of facts. To that effect, the Public Prosecutor committed to using joint visits with MONUSCO to carry out “inspections of police detention cells and judicial police offices to ensure that the received training is put into practice and that sanctions are applied to those who break the law”.

The Public Prosecutor finally expressed his wish to see these judicial police officers rise to the challenge of curbing smuggling and fraud at the border between Uvira and neighboring countries. In this regard, these judicial police officers were taught, through concrete examples, how to conduct an investigation, to observe the secrecy of police work and pre-trial investigations, as well as the rules of search and seizure, the difference between leads and evidence, a complaint and a denunciation. They also received clarifications on objects liable to seizure during a visit to the site where an offence has been committed.  In addition, they received training in techniques for the drawing up of a report or an arrest warrant in cases of flagrante delicto.

For 18 of the 27 judicial police officers who were sworn in last Saturday, the costs related to the ceremony were funded by BCNUDH. The other nine bore their own costs. 

 

Jean-Tobie Okala
Traduit par Tom