No fewer than eight soldiers, including five officers, have been sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for desertion and cowardice when fighting M23 rebels.
The soldiers were convicted by a military court in the country’s war-torn east on Friday, May 3, 2024.
Prosecutors had initially sought the death penalty against 11 soldiers, but the Goma court acquitted three of them, ruling that the charges against those soldiers were “not established”.
The troops were engaged in combat against the mostly Tutsi M23 (March 23 movement) rebels, who resumed armed activities in late 2021, seizing large swathes of North Kivu province.
“They never fled from the enemy nor abandoned their position — on the contrary,” said Alexis Olenga, a lawyer representing one of the five officers facing charges.
Olenga stated that the soldiers were stationed at Lushangi-Cafe, a federal army position near the strategic town of Sake, 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from North Kivu’s capital, Goma.
These sentences mark the first instances of capital punishment since authorities decided on March 13 to lift a suspension on executions that had been in place since 2003.
The inability of the army and its auxiliaries to halt the advance of the M23 rebels has led to suspicions of infiltration within the security forces.
Several military personnel, as well as members of parliament, senators, and business leaders, have been arrested and accused of “complicity with the enemy”.
For the past 20 years, death sentences have been handed down in the DRC, particularly in cases involving the military or armed groups, but they have consistently been commuted to life imprisonment.
Human rights groups and the Catholic Church have urged the government to abolish capital punishment for all crimes.
YOU MAY ALSO READ: Nigerian governor accuses government officials, security agencies of taking banditry as business ventures