At least 129 people died when inmates tried to escape from Makala Prison, where conditions are abysmal and overcrowding is a major problem.
More than 700 inmates were released from the largest prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s authorities said on Saturday, as officials sought to ease overcrowding in a facility where at least 129 people died in an attempted jailbreak this month.
Congo’s justice minister, Constant Mutamba, announced their release during a visit to the Makala Central Prison, where the deadly episode highlighted the alarming conditions faced by inmates in the only prison in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and one of Africa’s most populous cities.
Mr. Mutamba promised that Kinshasa would get a new prison, though he did not give details.
Of the 729 inmates released, most — 648 — were released on bail.
On the evening of Sept. 2, inmates, whose cells had been without water and electricity for more than a day and a half, tried to break out to escape the stifling heat, several inmates told The New York Times.
The details remain unclear, but most of the deaths occurred in a stampede that followed, while at least 24 people were fatally shot while trying to escape, the country’s authorities have said. Several female prisoners were raped, according to Human Rights Watch and Congo’s interior minister.
The Makala Prison, which was built in 1957 during the era of Belgian colonial rule and little renovated since, has a capacity of 1,500, but has at times held 10 times more than that.
The prison’s director, Joseph Yusufu Maliki, has been suspended, and dozens of inmates accused of raping female inmates during the jailbreak soon faced trial.
Some of the women told the television channel TV5 Monde that 10 men, some of whom were armed with scissors and knives, had raped them and threatened to kill or mutilate them if they resisted.
Human rights organizations and journalists have long described conditions in Makala and other prisons in the Central African country as inhumane: overcrowded, violent and filthy.
Last year, more than 500 inmates died from suffocation and various diseases at the prison, according to Emmanuel Adu Cole, a human-rights activist based in Kinshasa. Mr. Cole said that out of about 15,000 inmates, only 2,500 had been convicted; the rest were awaiting trial.
“Most of the inmates have no reason to be held in such inhumane conditions,” Mr. Cole said in a telephone interview. “This cannot continue.”
More than 500 inmates had been released from the Makala Prison in August, before the attempted jailbreak shed a new light on the conditions there.
“There is a program, across the country, that aims at building new prisons,” Patrick Muyaya, a government spokesman, said this month on the television channel France 24. “The incident that happened is going to accelerate the process that had already started.”
Mr. Muyaya did not provide details on how many facilities would be built, nor when they would be operational.
Elian Peltier is The Times’ West Africa correspondent, based in Dakar, Senegal. More about Elian Peltier
