Joseph Kabila, former DRC President
By agency reports
A military court sitting in Kinshasa on Tuesday sentenced a former President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Joseph Kabila to death.
Delivering judgment, the President of the tribunal, Lt.-Gen. Joseph Katalayi, held that Kabila was guilty of treason, war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder, sexual assault, torture, and insurrection charges.
Kabila, who was not in court and was not represented by legal counsel, was also ordered to pay around 50 billion dollars in various damages to the state and victims.
“In applying Article 7 of the Military Penal Code, the court hereby imposes a single sentence, namely the most severe one, which is the death penalty,” Katalayi said.
The case against the former president stems from his alleged role in backing the advance of Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in Eastern DRC.
Kabila, who led Congo from 2001 to 2019, had denied any wrongdoing, and insisted that the country’s judiciary was politicised.
After spending almost two decades in power, he stepped down only when deadly protests were unleashed on him.
Since late 2023, he has been residing mostly in South Africa, though he appeared in rebel-held Goma in eastern Congo in May.
He had entered into an awkward power-sharing deal with his successor, Felix Tshisekedi, but their relationship soon soured.
As M23 rebels marched on East Congo’s second-largest city of Bukavu in February, Tshisekedi told the Munich Security Conference that Kabila had sponsored the insurgency.
M23 now controls much of North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.
The fighting killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more this year.
The two sides signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in June, although they are both reinforcing their positions and blaming one another for flouting the accord, sources told UK News Agency, Reuters.
Rwanda, which has long denied helping M23, says its forces act in self-defence against Congo’s army and ethnic Hutu militiamen linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Meanwhile, Tshisekedi‘s government has moved to suspend Kabila’s political party and seize the assets of its leaders.
