Kavula, editor-in-chief and owner of the opposition newspaper Nsemo and a prominent member of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, was kidnapped on October 28 by a group of men thought to be from the Presidential Militia. Ten days later, he was found barely alive in a field on his farm outside Kasangulu, 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Kinshasa. He appeared to have been badly tortured. He died in a Kinshasa clinic on November 12. An autopsy was not performed, but medical tests indicated that he may have been injected with a toxic substance. Zairian authorities claimed that Kavula's death was a suicide.