05 November 2024 :

Four Congolese soldiers were sentenced to death on October 31, 2024 by a military court in Butembo, North Kivu (east of the Democratic Republic of Congo), with sentence commuted to prison.
The four soldiers were accused of looting the parish of Sainte Joséphine Bakhita in Mabambi during the state of siege and during operations against local guerrilla groups.
The soldiers were found guilty of theft, looting, vandalism against a church and violating the instructions of the state of siege.
The court ordered compensation for the victims and the return of the looted items, reminding the convicted of their right to appeal to the military court of North Kivu.
Soldiers of the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC) are often accused of targeting civilians and looting. The province of North Kivu has been under a state of siege since May 2021, which gives the military extensive powers.

30 September 2024 :

A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on August 8, 2024 sentenced 26 people accused of involvement in armed groups, including the M23, to death after a high-profile trial that started late last month.
Corneille Nangaa, the leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) was found guilty of war crimes, participation in an insurrection and treason.
Nangaa and 20 other defendants were sentenced to death in absentia on August 8, as they are currently on the run.
The five accused who were present for the trial have five days to appeal the sentence, the president of the court said.
The prosecutor in the trial, which began on July 24, had called for death sentences against 25 of the defendants and a 20-year jail term for one defendant.
Nangaa, the former president of the DRC’s electoral commission, launched the AFC political-military movement in December with the aim of uniting armed groups, political parties and civil society against the government.
One of its members is the M23 armed group accused of mass killings in eastern DRC’s decades-long conflict.
The key M23 figures on trial included its president Bertrand Bisimwa, military chief Sultani Makenga and spokespeople Willy Ngoma and Lawrence Kanyuka.
In a text message from an undisclosed location, Nangaa told The Associated Press news agency that “this nauseating judicial saga reinforces our struggle for democratic normality in Congo”.
In March, the Congolese government defied criticism from human rights organisations and lifted a moratorium on the death penalty that had been in place since 2003, aiming to target military personnel accused of treason.

17 September 2024 :

A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has sentenced to death 37 people, including three United States citizens, on charges of taking part in a failed coup in May.
“The court pronounces the harshest sentence: the death penalty for criminal association, the death penalty for attack, the death penalty for terrorism,” the court’s president, Freddy Ehume, said in a verdict read on live television on September 13, 2024.
The defendants – who also included a Briton, Belgian and Canadian – have five days to appeal the verdict. Fourteen people were acquitted in the trial, which opened in June.
Richard Bondo, the lawyer who defended the six foreigners, told The Associated Press news agency he disputed whether the death penalty could currently be imposed in the DRC despite its reinstatement this year and said his clients had inadequate interpreters during the investigation of the case.
“We will challenge this decision on appeal,” Bondo said.
At the time of the attempted coup, military officials said armed men had briefly occupied an office of the presidency in the capital, Kinshasa, on May 19. Their leader, US-based Congolese politician Christian Malanga, was killed by security forces, and two security guards were also killed in the failed takeover.
Malanga, who styled himself “President of New Zaire”, was a wealthy businessman, politician and one-time military captain in the Congolese army. He contested parliamentary elections in 2011 but was arrested and detained for several weeks under former President Joseph Kabila.
Upon his release, Malanga went to the US, where he founded the opposition United Congolese Party (UCP). Over the years, he campaigned for religious freedom in Africa and led anticorruption training initiatives for young Africans in Europe.
President Felix Tshisekedi was sworn in for a second term in January after elections that were marred by logistical issues, irregularities and violence.
Human Rights Watch had called on Congolese authorities to ensure the trial met international standards. “Congo and the region have a legacy of coups and attempted coups,” Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said shortly after the failed coup. “The Congolese government needs to treat this crisis as an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to human rights and the rule of law.”
Malanga’s son, Marcel Malanga, was sentenced to death on September 13 along with Taylor Thompson, who played high school football with him in Utah, and Benjamin Zalman-Polun, a business associate of the late elder Malanga.
Marcel Malanga had previously told the court that his father had threatened to kill him unless he participated. He also told the court it was his first time visiting the DRC at the invitation of his father, whom he hadn’t seen in years.
Another defendant sentenced on September 13 is a Belgian military expert.
“A majority of them, they came from the diaspora,” Al Jazeera’s Alain Uaykani said, reporting from Goma in the eastern DRC. “This coup was not organised by the military of the country or police officers here in the country.”
The DRC lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in March, citing treachery and espionage in recurring armed conflicts as the reason.

09 July 2024 :

Two more solders have been sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of Congo after they fled battles in conflict-torn North Kivu province, a military court said on July 5, 2024.
Congo’s army has been fighting the Rwanda-backed M23 insurgency for more than two years, as well as battling other militias in its eastern borderlands. The rebels seized the strategically important commune of Kanyabayonga last week.
The ruling, which follows the sentencing of 25 soldiers to death on Thursday, underscores the authorities’ wish to show it will not tolerate the desertions that have contributed to putting Congo on the back foot in the conflict.
“This trial has a dissuasive and pedagogical character whose mission is to make soldiers see that fleeing the battle lines does not protect them, but it does expose them to heavy sanctions,” state magistrate Kahambu Muhasa Melissa told Reuters.
The military tribunal said on July 5 that one of the soldiers, Kakule Mupasula Raphael, had abandoned the front line in Kanyabayonga and fled. He was also found guilty of murdering the child of an officer.
He has pleaded not guilty and denied killing the child. He said he was not alone in leaving the front line.
“There were a lot of us soldiers who fled Kanyabayonga … even our commanders fled too,” he told Reuters. He plans to appeal the sentence.
A second soldier was accused of firing shots at an ambulance whose driver refused to take him in as the soldier was trying to leave the battlefield. He pleaded guilty and asked for extenuating circumstances to be taken into account.

08 July 2024 :

Twenty-five soldiers have been sentenced to death by a military tribunal in the Democratic Republic of Congo for fleeing battles against M23 rebels and theft, their lawyer and an army spokesman said on July 4, 2024.
Congo's army has been fighting the Rwanda-backed M23 insurgency for more than two years, as well as facing other militia violence, with around 2.7 million people displaced within North Kivu province. The rebels advanced into strategically important territory last week.
On July 2, the army detained 27 soldiers after they abandoned their positions in the villages of Keseghe and Matembe in the province. Army spokesman Reagan Mbuyi Kalonji said the runaways were found stealing goods from shops in the nearby village of Alimbongo.
They were detained along with four of their wives, who were staying in the village and who received the looted goods, Kalonji said.
A military tribunal was set up in Alimbongo on July 3 to try them and the magistrate sentenced 25 to death for theft, fleeing the enemy and violating orders, among other charges.
One soldier was handed a 10-year prison sentence while the four wives and another soldier were acquitted.
All denied the charges, aside from one of the 25, who pleaded guilty.
Their lawyer, Jules Muvweko, said he would appeal the verdict.
Congo's military, long blighted with internal divisions, insufficient resources, poor logistics and the country's endemic corruption, has become acutely dysfunctional in this crisis.
Eight officers were sentenced to death in May for cowardice and other crimes, exposing damaging disarray in Congo's armed forces which has been hobbling the fight against M23, army officers told Reuters.
Congo lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in March, citing treachery and espionage in recurring armed conflicts as the reason.
The central African country had introduced the moratorium on the death penalty in early 2000, but had never abolished it.

05 May 2024 :

A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo's war-torn east on May 3, 2024 handed a death sentence to eight soldiers, including five officers, for desertion and cowardice when fighting M23 rebels.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty against 11 soldiers on trial in the same case, but the Goma court acquitted three of them, ruling that the charges against those soldiers were "not established".
The troops were fighting against the mostly Tutsi M23 (March 23 movement) rebels, who took up arms again in late 2021, seizing large swathes of North Kivu province.
"They never fled from the enemy nor abandoned their position -- on the contrary," said Alexis Olenga, lawyer for one of the five officers facing charges.
Olenga said the soldiers were based at Lushangi-Cafe, a federal army position close to the strategic town of Sake, 20 kilometres (12 miles) down the road from North Kivu's capital Goma.
These were the first capital punishment sentences since authorities decided on March 13 to lift a suspension on executions that had been enforced since 2003.
The failure of the army and its auxiliaries to halt the advance of the M23 rebels has raised suspicion that the security forces had been infiltrated.
Several military personnel as well as members of parliament, senators and business leaders have been arrested and accused of "complicity with the enemy".
For the last 20 years, death sentences have been handed down in the DRC, especially in cases involving the military or armed groups, but have systematically been commuted to life in prison.
Human rights groups and the Catholic Church have called on the government to abolish capital punishment for any crime.

15 April 2024 :

A soldier from the army, Sergeant Major Serugo Buhera, on April 6, 2024 was sentenced to death for shooting and killing a pregnant woman, at the end of a summary trial at the military garrison tribunal of Goma, in the North Kivu province, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
This military member of the command staff at the Katindo military camp in Goma was found guilty of "rape, murder, and the dissipation of war ammunition." The sergeant-major had riddled a pregnant woman with bullets on the night of April 3 to 4, 2024. In his defense before the court, the accused claimed he had mistaken the victim for a "monstrous creature."
The events took place while this soldier was assigned to guard the barrier post near the Tongilo primary school at the entrance of the Katindo military camp, in the city of Goma.
According to his statements before the military tribunal, before shooting the pregnant woman with ten bullets, he claimed to have seen a silhouette he mistook for a monster approaching him. These statements were deemed "fallacious" by various witnesses.
According to the prosecution, the soldier had forcefully taken the pregnant woman before raping her. A dispute between him and the victim ensued. He then shot her ten times in the chest, reports Radio Okapi.
Therefore, the judge found him guilty of the acts of rape, murder, and dissipation of war ammunition, and pronounced the heaviest penalty: the death sentence. After the verdict was announced, the convicted filed an appeal.

22 March 2024 :

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has resolved to lift a 21-year moratorium on death penalty executions as part of measures to stop its citizens, and serving military and police, from working with M23 rebels in the eastern part of the country.
During the moratorium, death penalty sentences were handed down, but no hangings took place.
On March 13, 2024, the First President of the High Military Court, the Auditor General of the National Army (FARDC), the Prosecutor General at the Court of Cassation, the President of the Council Superior of the Judiciary, and the President of the Constitutional Court attended a meeting addressed by Rose Mutombo Kiese, the Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals of the DRC.
It was during that meeting that Mutombo disclosed why the government was lifting the moratorium on executions. She said it was due to the instability in the eastern DRC that executions would go ahead because in some cases, locals were working with insurgents.
"During the last 30 years, the eastern part of our country has been plagued by recurring armed conflicts, often orchestrated by foreign states which for the circumstance, sometimes benefit from the complicity of some of our compatriots.
"These acts of treachery or espionage have exacted a heavy price from both the population and the republic given the immensity of the damage suffered," she said.
The DRC says, and much of the world accepts, that M23 is supported by Rwanda - a claim Rwanda rejects.
M23 claims to be working to protect civilians in the east.
While people are displaced during the conflict, the rebels allege that the FARDC and its allies such as the SADC force led by South Africa were shelling civilian populations.After some operations, M23 announced through their social media channels that ordinary civilians could go about their day-to-day business.
It's a headache for Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defence Jean-Pierre Bemba, who submitted the recommendations to continue executions.
Mutombo in her address, said the moratorium was being abused or taken for granted.
She said:
“Unfortunately, this moratorium was in the eyes of all these offenders as a guarantee of impunity because, even when they have been irrevocably condemned capital punishment, they were assured that this sentence would never be carried out their place.”
According to the resolution, for civilians, the execution would happen in situations such as association with criminals, treason, participation in armed bands, espionage, participation in an insurrectional movement and genocide.
For those in the army and police, the executions would be carried out under circumstances such as desertion to the enemy, cowardice, military conspiracy, disobedience, and refusal to march against the enemy.