KIGALI, Rwanda
The High Military Court in the Democratic Republic of Congo sentenced 54 people to death, including an army colonel, for their role in the 2017 murder of UN experts in central Congo, according to court documents Tuesday.
The experts, including American Michael Sharp and Swedish national Zaida Catalan, were killed while investigating violence in Kasai Central province following the uprising of the Kamwina Nsapu militia, according to prosecutors.
The convicts include several leaders of the Kamuina Nsapu militia, and Col. Jean de Dieu Mambweni, an officer in the Congolese army.
They were found guilty of war crimes in the murder of the UN experts.
Mambweni had been sentenced to 10 years in prison during the first trial in 2022.
He was accused of having supplied ammunition that could have been used in the killing of the experts.
But in the appeal ruling handed down Friday, the court said that in increasing his sentence to death, prosecutors had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mambweni had “trapped” the experts.
During the trial, the court heard that the victims were intercepted March 12, 2017, while on a fact-finding mission on the violence in Kasai. They were led to a remote area and shot.
Their bodies were found more than two weeks later.
The appeal trial involved 54 defendants, up from 51 in the first judgment after more suspects were arrested.
While the decision put an end to nearly nine years of the legal battle, the Congo National Human Rights Commission believes high-ranking masterminds behind the killing are yet to be held accountable.
Speaking to reporters in Kinshasa on Monday, Paul Nsapu, the commission’s president, demanded additional investigations to establish all those responsible for the killing.
The two experts were part of a UN fact-finding mission into human rights violations in the Kasai province, which was then rocked by violent clashes between security forces and the Kamwina Nsapu militia group.
