{"id":36584,"date":"2026-06-09T11:47:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T09:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=36584"},"modified":"2026-06-09T11:51:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T09:51:43","slug":"drc-colonel-sentenced-to-death-over-murder-of-un-experts","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/drc-colonel-sentenced-to-death-over-murder-of-un-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"DRC Colonel sentenced to death over murder of UN experts"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>A Democratic Republic Congo (DRC) military court has sentenced \u200can army Colonel to death for taking part in a conspiracy to murder two United Nations (UN) experts in central DRC nearly a decade ago, in a case that continues to raise questions about state involvement.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>At his first trial in 2022, Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni received \u200ba 10-year term for failing to assist persons in danger and disobeying orders.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Military Prosecutors appealed, arguing \u200bthat he bore greater responsibility.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The High Military Court in Kinshasa agreed, finding Mambweni guilty \u2060on Friday of the war crime of murder for actively orchestrating the killings, and sentencing him to death, according to \u200ba ruling reviewed by\u00a0<em>Reuters\u00a0<\/em>and the sister of one of the victims.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>DRC has not carried out an execution \u200bsince 2003, meaning the sentence will in practice become life imprisonment.<\/div>\n<div>UN 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 \u200bat a bridge near the village of Moyo-Musila.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>They were marched into the bush and shot. Their bodies \u200bwere found 16 days later.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The ruling, which closes nearly nine years of proceedings, also upheld \u200cdeath sentences \u2060against dozens of militia fighters handed down in 2022.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>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.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Catalan&#8217;s sister, Elizabeth Morseby, welcomed the court&#8217;s finding that there had been a conspiracy. &#8220;This confirms that Zaida and Michael were not simply victims of a \u200brandom act of violence,&#8221; she \u200bsaid.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But she said justice \u2060remained incomplete, pointing to recordings presented in court attributed to Mambweni in which he allegedly expressed concern that the UN experts could incriminate authorities and expose efforts to conceal mass \u200bgraves.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>In January, Human Rights Watch said the 2022 trial had ignored video evidence showing \u200bgovernment agents \u2060helping to direct the experts toward the ambush site.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Morseby said that &#8220;true accountability requires not only convictions, but a full understanding of how and why these crimes were allowed to happen&#8221;. She argued that Mambweni had had no personal motive \u2060to kill \u200bthe experts.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Paul Nsapu Mukulu, President of DRC&#8217;s National Human Rights Commission, \u200bsaid Mambweni was unlikely to have acted alone.<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;All the evidence suggests that the double murder of the UN experts constitutes a state crime, \u200band a state crime is not easily dealt with.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13699,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-36584","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"DRC military court has sentenced \u200can army Colonel to death","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36585,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36584\/revisions\/36585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}