Congo colonel sentenced to death over murder of UN experts

DAKAR, June 9 - A Congolese military court has sentenced an army colonel to death for taking part in a conspiracy to murder two U.N. experts in central Congo nearly a decade ago, in a case that continues to raise questions about state involvement.

At his first trial in 2022, Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni received a 10-year term for failing to assist persons in danger and disobeying orders. Military prosecutors appealed, arguing that he bore greater responsibility.

The High Military Court in Kinshasa agreed, finding Mambweni guilty on Friday of the war crime of murder for actively orchestrating the killings, and sentencing him to death, according to a ruling reviewed by Reuters and the sister of one of the victims.

Congo has not carried out an execution since 2003, meaning the sentence will in practice become life imprisonment.

U.N. experts Zaida Catalan, a Swedish-Chilean, and Michael Sharp, an American, were investigating mass killings in the Kasai region when fighters from the Kamuina Nsapu militia stopped them on March 12, 2017 at a bridge near the village of Moyo-Musila. They were marched into the bush and shot. Their bodies were found 16 days later.

SUSPICIONS THAT MURDERS SERVED CONGO'S STATE INTERESTS

The ruling, which closes nearly nine years of proceedings, also upheld death sentences against dozens of militia fighters handed down in 2022.

Prosecutors initially dismissed suggestions that state agents were involved, but later arrested the colonel and other officials who they said had been working with the rebels.

Catalan's sister, Elizabeth Morseby, welcomed the court's finding that there had been a conspiracy. "This confirms that Zaida and Michael were not simply victims of a random act of violence," she said.

But she said justice remained incomplete, pointing to recordings presented in court attributed to Mambweni in which he allegedly expressed concern that the U.N. experts could incriminate authorities and expose efforts to conceal mass graves.

In January, Human Rights Watch said the 2022 trial had ignored video evidence showing government agents helping to direct the experts toward the ambush site.Morseby said that "true accountability requires not only convictions, but a full understanding of how and why these crimes were allowed to happen". She argued that Mambweni had had no personal motive to kill the experts.

Paul Nsapu Mukulu, president of Congo's National Human Rights Commission, said Mambweni was unlikely to have acted alone.

"All the evidence suggests that the double murder of the U.N. experts constitutes a state crime, and a state crime is not easily dealt with." REUTERS