Democratic Republic of Congo court sentences 51 to death over killing of 2 UN experts in 2017
India Today
A Democratic Republic of Congo court sentenced 51 people to death over the killing of two UN experts in 2017.
A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday sentenced 51 people to death, several in absentia, in a mass trial over the 2017 murder of two UN experts in a troubled central region.
Capital punishment is frequently pronounced in murder cases in the DRC, but is routinely commuted to life imprisonment since the country declared a moratorium on executions in 2003.
Dozens of people have been on trial for more than four years over a killing that shook diplomats and the aid community, although key questions about the episode remain unanswered.
Michael Sharp, an American, and Zaida Catalan, a Swedish-Chilean, disappeared as they probed violence in the Kasai region after being hired to do so by the United Nations.
They were investigating mass graves linked to a bloody conflict that had flared between the government and a local group.
Their bodies were found in a village on March 28, 2017, 16 days after they went missing. Catalan had been beheaded.
Unrest in the Kasai region had broken out in 2016, triggered by the killing of a local traditional chief, the Kamuina Nsapu, by the security forces.
