Digital Desk: In a collective trial over the 2017 murder of two UN experts in a troubled central area, a military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo condemned 51 individuals to death, including seven in absentia.
In the DRC, capital penalty is commonly imposed in murder cases, but since the nation placed a moratorium on executions in 2003, it has been routinely commuted to life imprisonment.For more than four years, dozens of individuals have been on trial for a homicide that shocked diplomats and the aid world, yet critical questions about the incident remain unresolved.
After being recruited by the United Nations to investigate violence in the Kasai region, Michael Sharp, an American, and Zaida Catalan, a Swedish-Chilean, vanished.
They were looking into mass graves that were tied to a deadly war between the government and a local organisation.
On March 28, 2017, 16 days after they went missing, the two UN experts' remains were discovered in a hamlet. Catalan had been beheaded.
Unrest erupted in the Kasai area in 2016, sparked by the assassination of a local traditional chief, the Kamuina Nsapu, by security personnel.
Before the fighting ended in mid-2017, some 3,400 people were murdered, and tens of thousands of more were forced to flee their homes.
Prosecutors at Kananga's military court have sought the death penalty for 51 of the 54 defendants, 22 of whom are fugitives being prosecuted in their absence.
"Terrorism" and "murder" were among the charges, as were "membership in an insurrectional movement" and "the conduct of a war crime by mutilation."
Pro-Kamuina Nsapu militias killed the couple on March 12, 2017, the day they went missing, according to the official version of events.
However, a report presented to the UN Security Council in June 2017 characterised the deaths as a "premeditated setup" by personnel of state security.
During the trial, prosecutors claimed that the militiamen carried out the killings as a form of vengeance against the UN, which the sect accused of failing to protect them from army attacks.
Those who supposedly ordered the conduct were not named during the protracted sessions, assuming such is the case.
A colonel, Jean de Dieu Mambweni, was one of the major suspects, according to authorities, who collaborated with the militiamen by giving them with ammunition. His lawyers claim the trial is a set-up, and he has rejected the claims.
Mambweni was originally condemned to death, but ultimately received a 10-year term for "disobedience to orders and failing to aid a person in danger." The judgement would be appealed, according to his defence team.
Two additional inmates, including a journalist, were acquitted.
The High Military Court in Kinshasa, the DRC's capital, will hear an appeal of Saturday's ruling.
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