DRC: 49 sentenced to death in the trial of the assassination of UN experts

Zaida Catalan and Michael Sharp, UN experts murdered in the DRC.

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The trial for the murder of the two United Nations experts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2017 ended on Saturday January 29 with the death sentences of 49 people.

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Forty-nine death sentences were pronounced mainly against former militiamen of the Kamuina Nsapu sect, in retaliation for the death of their leader.

But Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni, accused of having sent the two UN experts into a trap and of having armed their assassins, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

It is a verdict of 146 pages which was read for five hours by the military court of Kananga after four years of trial.

But it raises more questions than it answers, says Thomas Fessy of Human Rights Watch.

While the Kananga military court sentenced the former militiamen involved to the death penalty, that is to say

life imprisonment, it deemed the evidence insufficient to convict Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni for "

 ” as requested by the public prosecutor.

The investigation by the judicial authorities and this trial have not shed any light on what happened: whether it was the murder of the UN investigators, Zaida Catalan and Michael Sharp, or the disappearance of their Congolese interpreter and driver.

And so nearly five years after their assassination, there are still more questions to answer and much more to do.

That this judicial episode with its slowness and procrastination of recent years, is not a way to close the case.

We repeat: the Congolese justice system, with the support of the UN, must now carry out an exhaustive investigation into the crucial role that state officials, and therefore the government or the security forces, may have played in these murders.

President Tshisekedi

Thomas Fessy (Human Rights Watch): “There are still more questions than answers”

Leonard Vincent

Jean de Dieu Mambweni sentenced for "violation of instructions"

The man who was accused of being the organizer of the trap into which the American Michael Sharp and the Swede Zaida Catalan would have fallen was convicted only of allegedly disobeying orders and letting the victims go to an area that he knew dangerous.

His lawyer Me Daniel Makolo, contacted just after the verdict, is waiting to see his client before saying whether he will appeal to the High Military Court of Kinshasa.

As for the defenders of the other condemned, they did not want to comment.

Human Rights Watch, like former president Dominique Kambala, immediately regretted that the court did not seek to go up the chain of command, thus neglecting the responsibilities of the state.

Two defendants, including journalist Trudon Raphael Kapuku, were acquitted.

►Also read: Assassination of UN experts in the DRC: three years of chaotic proceedings

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