Mobutu’s Son Suspected Of Killing Moderate General

The morning after Zaire’s longtime dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, abandoned power on Friday, it became apparent that he had left behind a surrogate who was ready to act where he was not.

In a night filled with violent score-settling in the Zairian capital, one name more than any other was on the lips of Zairian officers and foreign military analysts who struggled to sort rumor from fact and keep a tally on the bloodletting, and it too was Mobutu.

Well after President Mobutu’s departure, his youngest son, Capt. Mobutu Kongulu, 27, an officer in the Presidential Guard - and a man feared here as Zaire’s own “Saddam Hussein”- sought to rally other guardsmen in a last-ditch attempt to stave off a rebel capture of Kinshasa and avenge his father’s defeat, Zairian officers said Saturday.

From the moment he learned of his father’s decision to leave power, they said, he plotted how to punish those he felt had abandoned the president.

On Friday night, Capt. Mobutu was seen entering the military camp where his father kept his final Kinshasa residence. Moments later, the army chief of staff and defense minister, Gen. Mahele Lioko, was shot in the head and killed.

Mahele’s associates said that word had leaked out that he was planning to travel to Lusaka, Zambia, Saturday to negotiate a cease-fire with the rebels and that Capt. Mobutu had decided to prevent it.

Later that night, witnesses said, Capt. Mobutu arrived with several jeep loads of presidential guards at the Inter-Continental Hotel. While the captain waited outside, the witnesses said, the guardsmen entered the hotel in search of people who had reportedly encouraged negotiations with the rebels, dragged out two men and drove them away.

Hearing of the killings, the country’s prime minister, Gen. Likulia Bolongo, sought refuge in the French ambassador’s residence.

Saturday morning, even as the rebels were entering the capital, Capt. Mobutu was seen racing through the streets of the city. Associates said he was still hunting down enemies.

Only as the rebel takeover neared completion, in late afternoon, did he flee the city, arriving in the Congolese capital, Brazzaville, after a river crossing.

His frantic exodus with children, cronies and bodyguards from the Intercontinental Hotel ended in one of the most striking ironies of the day. Capt. Mobutu left two battle tanks, a Mercedes-Benz and two other cars at the shore when the group fled across the river to Brazzaville and safety.

Doing what many desperate Zairians have done for years, a group of men made the best of someone else’s bad situation and converged on the cars and tanks like vultures, stripping everything they could from the detritus of Mobutu’s family.

When journalists drove up and interrupted them, the dozen men turned on them to demand money and began banging on their van to get it. In the end, car and tank parts were their only bounty.

Although his exact role in the death of Mahele is not entirely clear, Western diplomats say that Capt. Mobutu was known to have had an angry dispute with the general only hours before.

“We have a very strong suspicion that he is responsible for this,” a Western diplomat said of Mahele’s killing.

An associate of Likulia said that Friday’s murderous events stemmed from the decision by Mahele, Likulia and Gen. Nzimbi Ngbale to confront President Mobutu on Thursday with the news that he had to leave power.

“They met with Mobutu three times,” the associate said. “The first time Mobutu sent them away angrily. The second time, Mahele raised his voice with Mobutu and slammed the door as he left the meeting. Many of us felt already then that that sealed his fate with the president’s clan.”

After a third meeting with the generals, late on Thursday night, Mobutu agreed to go. On Friday morning, he left Kinshasa. Hours later, Nzimbi, Mobutu’s nephew and head of the Presidential Guard, fled to Brazzaville by boat.

That same morning, nervous aides of Mahele told foreign journalists at the Defense Ministry that the general wanted to negotiate a settlement with the rebels and would soon be making a statement.

After a nighttime meeting with Likulia to discuss which of them would issue a call to Zaire’s Army to lay down its arms, Mahele went to Camp Tshatshi with a small escort to try to calm members of the Presidential Guard, who were said to be still itching for a fight.

The guardsmen began shouting that the general was a traitor and made a move to seize him. When his bodyguards intervened, someone shot the general in the head at close range from behind.

An aide to Captain Mobutu denied the captain’s responsibility. “Kongulu arrived at just about the same time that Mahele was having his trouble,” the aide said “He heard word on the radio that there was trouble and came to help, but just as he got there they shot him.”