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DRC: 51 people sentenced for the murders of UN experts

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In the DRC, the military court convicted 51 people for the 2017 murders of two UN experts investigating violence in Kasai. Among those convicted, 49 people received the death penalty.

It was under the light of a mobile phone that General Jean Paulin Ntshayokolo read, last night, the proclamation of the sentence of the 54 accused in the murders of the Swede Zaida Catalán and the American Michael Sharp. The two UN experts had been assassinated in Kasai five years earlier. Among the defendants, three were cleared, two received prison sentences and 49 were sentenced to death. A sentence commuted to life imprisonment in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The charges, ranging from terrorism to assassination, participation in an insurrectionary movement and mutilation, have been attributed to pro-Kamwina Nsapu armed fighters in the dock or on the run. Since the murder of UN experts on March 12, 2017, the Security Council has been crying out about the "ambush" in which Catalán and Sharp would have fallen. The council even spoke, in 2018, of the involvement of senior Congolese state officials.

Insufficient verdict, for families

During the trial, prosecutors at the Kananga Military Court argued that the fighters were seeking revenge against the UN. The Kamwina Nsapu rebels accuse the authority of not having prevented the attacks of the Congolese army against them.

For Zaida Catalán's sister, Elisabeth Morseby, the testimony in the case was of questionable reliability. The accused would have spent, according to her, too much time together in prison. The family of the Swede, as well as her government, insisted after the verdict on the importance of continuing the investigation. Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde tweeted: "We will study the verdict, and remind that it can be appealed".

During the early stages of the trial, several senior army officers were briefly interrogated. Only one was sentenced on Saturday. Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni was in collusion with the militiamen, to whom he provided ammunition. Mambweni was eventually sentenced to ten years in prison for “disobeying orders and failing to assist a person in danger”.

The aftermath of the “first genocide of the XNUMXst century”

The Kamwina Nsapu rebellion erupted in 2016 after the alleged rape of family members of a traditional chief of the Luba ethnic group – the ethnic group of current President Félix Tshisekedi, himself Baluba from Kasai. In light of the selective killings targeting non-Lubas, Congolese journalist Bruno Kasonga called the Kasai conflict the "first genocide of the 21st century".

During the conflict, several abuses are attributed to the Congolese army. Civilian casualties are estimated at more than 3 and many NGO workers are among the casualties. Swede Zaida Catalán and American Michael Sharp, deployed by the UN Security Council to investigate civilian massacres, were beheaded and buried in March 000.

Read: Russia wants to end Western UN experts in Africa

The news and the accusations made by the army against the Kamwina Nsapu, put a stop to hostilities. The heavy military intervention of the FARDC put a bloody end to the conflict. Since the arrest of some twenty of those accused of the assassination of UN experts, the trial has dragged on. In view of the accusations of the families of the victims and of the international authorities, the verdict of this Saturday does not mark, either, the end of the judicial soap opera.

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