Over 60 appear in court following DR Congo prison break attempt

More than 60 people accused of offences including rape and arson during an attempted prison break in the Democratic Republic of Congo appeared before a military court Wednesday, a defence lawyer said.

The 63 defendants on trial in the capital Kinshasa face charges of "spiteful destruction, arson, acts of terrorism and rape of women", Michel Maftaa, one of the defence lawyers, told AFP.

The circumstances around the attempt to bust out of the highly overcrowded Makala prison in Kinshasa in the early hours of September 2 remain unclear.

Witnesses told AFP they heard gunfire at around 2:00 am that lasted for several hours in the area of the prison, a popular and residential neighbourhood.

The trial began last week, Maftaa said.

He added that there were a number of "grey areas" surrounding the alleged involvement of the accused in the trial.

The government said this week that two people had died from their injuries, raising the death toll in the attempted jail break to 131, 24 of whom were shot.

A number of women were also raped, Interior Minister Jacquemain Shabani has said.

But a local NGO, the Bill Clinton Foundation for Peace, said in a statement last week that "the number of deaths given by the Congolese government is incorrect".

The group claimed there were just over 15,000 detainees in Makala before the incident, and now there are just over 13,000, taking into account 100 prisoners subsequently transferred to a separate prison.

That would suggest a much higher number of prisoners who either escaped or were killed.

The European Union, Belgium and France have called for an investigation to "shed light" on what happened.

The Makala prison has capacity for 1,500 inmates, but it is overcrowded, and rights organisations regularly complain about the conditions of detention at the jail.

It holds 14,000 to 15,000 prisoners, according to official statistics.

As well as the human toll, the escape attempt caused damage to buildings, with part of the prison, mainly housing the administrative offices, set on fire, the government said.

The prison was already badly damaged during an attack in 2017 that led to more than 4,000 prisoners escaping, some of them described as "dangerous" by police.