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A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has sentenced the country’s former president Joseph Kabila to death in absentia after convicting him of war crimes, treason and crimes against humanity.
The case stems from his alleged role in backing the advance of M23 rebels supported by Rwanda in DRC’s volatile eastern provinces. Kabila, who led the country from 2001 to 2019, has denied wrongdoing and said the judiciary had been politicised.
Lt Gen Joseph Mutombo Katalayi, presiding over the tribunal in Kinshasa, said Kabila had been found guilty of charges that included murder, sexual assault, torture and insurrection.
Kabila did not attend the trial and was not represented by legal counsel. Neither he nor his representatives were immediately available for comment. His whereabouts were not immediately known.
“In applying article 7 of the military penal code,[the court] imposes a single sentence, namely the most severe one, which is the death penalty,” Katalayi said while delivering the verdict.
Kabila was also ordered to pay about $50bn (£36bn) in damages to the state and victims.
The verdict could fuel further divisions in the vast mineral-rich central African country, which has endured decades of conflict.
Kabila spent almost 20 years in power and stepped down only after deadly protests against him. He has been living mostly in South Africa since 2023, but appeared in the rebel-held city of Goma in eastern DRC in May.
He entered in to an awkward power-sharing deal with his successor, Felix Tshisekedi, but their relationship soon soured.
As M23 rebels marched on eastern DRC’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 has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more this year. The two sides signed a US-brokered peace agreement in June, but they are both reinforcing their positions and blaming one another for flouting the accord, sources have said.
Rwanda, which has long denied helping M23, says its forces act in self-defence against DRC’s army and ethnic Hutu militia members linked to the 1994 genocide.
Tshisekedi’s government has moved to suspend Kabila’s political party and seize its leaders’ assets.
