Former DRC President Joseph Kabila sentenced to death for treason

Zuko Komisa

Former President Joseph Kabila was sentenced to death in absentia for treason by a DRC military court on Tuesday.
The 54-year-old was convicted of complicity with the M23 armed group, whose seizure of the eastern DRC is supported by Rwanda.
The sentence, handed down after Kabila’s parliamentary immunity was lifted, comes after the DRC recently ended a moratorium on the death penalty.

A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has sentenced former President Joseph Kabila to death in absentia for the charge of treason.

The 54-year-old former head of state, who was neither present nor legally represented during the proceedings in the capital, Kinshasa, was found guilty of complicity with the M23 anti-government armed group.

The verdict, handed down at the conclusion of a nearly five-hour hearing, saw the court president pronounce the death penalty “without admitting mitigating circumstances,” according to reports from the packed chamber of lawyers and journalists.

The military tribunal determined that Kabila was involved with the M23 rebels, a group which has, with alleged Rwandan assistance, successfully seized large swathes of the DRC’s resource-rich eastern territory.

Kabila, whose current whereabouts remain unknown, has been a figure of political intrigue since leaving the vast central African nation in 2023.

He briefly caused considerable disquiet in Kinshasa when he reportedly reappeared in the M23-occupied city of Goma in the volatile east earlier this May. The path to the trial was cleared after his parliamentary immunity, which he held as a senator for life, was formally lifted at the end of May.

The DRC, which has endured over three decades of conflict and violence, lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in 2024. However, despite this ruling, the nation has not carried out an execution in years.