KOFFI OLOMIDE FOUND GUILTY OF RAPE

Congolese musician Koffi Olomide was on Monday found guilty of statutory rape of one of his former dancers when she was 15 years.

He was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence by a court in France in absentia, as he failed to turn up. He fled to DR Congo in 2009 but had initially said he would appear at the trial to defend himself.

Olomide went on trial after four former dancers claimed he sexually assaulted them several times between 2002 and 2006. The assaults allegedly happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in France, including at a villa outside Paris where the women said they were held against their will.

The dancers said they managed to make a night-time escape from the villa in June 2006, and have not returned to their country ever since. Prosecutors at his trial in Nanterre, had sought a seven prison sentence but the court dismissed the assault and kidnapping charges.

Koffie, 62, was also ordered to pay Sh570,000 in damages to the former dancer, as well as another  Sh570,000  fine for helping three of the women enter France illegally.

He was briefly jailed in DR Congo in 2016 for kicking one of his dancers, and had already been given a suspended three-month prison sentence in 2012 for striking his producer.

2016 he was deported from Kenya for kicking one of his dancers at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

In 2012 he was charged with aggravated rape but the charges were reduced.

He is also currently sought by Zambian police for striking a Rwandan photojournalist in Lusaka in 2012. 2006 a France court found him guilty of tax fraud in 2006.

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