We are delighted to share the news that all charges against Rafael Marques were dropped yesterday, and he has now been released. Rafael – a journalist and a former student at the University of Oxford – was facing ten years in jail, and fines amounting to $1.2m in defamation. The charges emerged in response to his recent book, which documented the human rights abuses faced by miners and villagers in Lunda Norte, the diamond region of the country, and named seven generals and two mining companies as being complicit in those abuses. As a result of the settlement yesterday, Rafael can now continue to follow the human rights situation in Lunda Norte, which the generals have committed to improve.
