A Congolese military court has sentenced 54 defendants to death, including a former army colonel
The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s High Military Court has sentenced all 54 defendants to death in a long-running case involving the murder of two UN experts.
The victims, investigator Michael Sharp, a 34-year-old American, and expert Zaida Catalan, a 36-year-old Swede, were killed in 2017 while investigating violence in the conflict-ridden Kasai region. The Congolese court found that the pair had been lured into an ambush, accused of being traitors, and executed.
The verdict was delivered on Friday at Ndolo military prison in Kinshasa. Among those convicted was former Congolese army officer Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni, who previously served on the staff of the 21st Military Region.
Mambweni was initially sentenced to ten years in prison in 2022 for failing to assist people in danger and disobeying orders. However, judges later concluded that he had played a direct role in arranging the operation that led to the deaths of the UN investigators.
The DR Congo’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) argued that the investigation failed to identify and prosecute those who may have ordered and orchestrated the killings.
Sharp and Catalan were investigating reports of mass killings in Kasai when fighters linked to the Kamuina Nsapu militia stopped them at a bridge near the village of Moyo-Musila on March 12, 2017. They were then led into a remote wooded area, where they were killed. Their remains were found 16 days after the attack.
The death penalty is legal in DR Congo. Although courts continued to hand down death sentences, a de facto moratorium in place since 2003 meant they were routinely commuted to life imprisonment. The government ended the 21-year suspension of executions in March 2024, restoring capital punishment in practice.
Across Africa, more countries have abolished capital punishment in recent decades. Since 2000, nations such as Gabon (2010), the Republic of Congo and Madagascar (2015), Chad (2020), Sierra Leone (2021), and the Central African Republic and Zambia (2022) have ended the death penalty.
