30, January 2022
Congo-Kinshasa court sentences 51 to death over 2017 murder of UN experts 0
A court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has sentenced 51 people to death over the killing of two United Nations experts.
Michael Sharp from the US and Swedish Zaida Catalan were killed in 2017 in the volatile Kasai region while on mission for the UN.
The military court on Saturday convicted the defendants, who were almost all militia members, on multiple counts including terrorism, murder, participation in an insurrectional movement and war crime through mutilation.
Of the 54 suspects on trial, 22 fugitives were tried in absentia. Two defendants, including a journalist and a police officer, were acquitted.
The two UN experts were on a UN mission to investigate a conflict between government forces and an armed group in the central Kasai region in March 2017 when they were stopped on a road and executed summarily by the armed men in a nearby field.
Catalan was then decapitated.
The bodies of the two UN experts were found on March 28, 2017, days after they went missing.
Congolese officials have blamed the incident on the Kamuina Nsapu militias, who were in conflict from 2016 to mid-2017 with the Congolese army forces in the region.
However, the DR Congo has been the scene of deadly violence for decades with armed militant groups oftentimes raiding villages and killing civilians.
DR Congo is a mineral-rich country that produces diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, cassiterite (tin ore) and coltan, which is used in mobile phones, personal computers, automotive electronics, and cameras, as well as oil, coffee and timber.
Despite the abundance of natural wealth, the Congolese people live in poverty. In 2019, DR Congo ranked 178th in Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
Sources
31, January 2022
Burkina Faso court suspends Sankara assassination trial following coup 0
A long-awaited trial in Burkina Faso over the 1987 assassination of revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara is being suspended until “the restoration of the constitution”, a court said Monday, a week after a military coup.
The trial of Sankara’s alleged killers was to resume at a military court in the capital Ouagadougou on Monday.
But Judge Urbain Meda announced the hearing was suspended and told parties “to remain alert for the resumption, which will be after the restoration of the constitution”.
He made the announcement after civil parties in the case called for a suspension pending “judicial normalisation” by Burkina’s new ruling junta.
“Civilian plaintiffs feel that a trial has to take place within a reasonable time, but we do not want a trial (with) flaws,” said lawyer Prosper Farama, representing the Sankara family.
The trial opened last October and has been closely followed by the Burkinabe public.
It has been showcased as the chance to shed light on one of the murkiest chapters in the troubled country’s history.
Revered among African radicals, Sankara was an army captain aged just 33 when he came to power in a coup in 1983.
The fiery Marxist-Leninist railed against imperialism and colonialism, often angering Western leaders but gaining followers across the continent and beyond.
He and 12 of his colleagues were gunned down by a hit squad on October 15, 1987, at a meeting of the ruling National Revolutionary Council.
Their assassination coincided with a coup that brought Sankara’s erstwhile comrade-in-arms, Blaise Compaore, to power.
Compaore ruled for 27 years before being deposed by a popular uprising in 2014 and fleeing to neighbouring Ivory Coast.
Fourteen defendants are on trial, two of them in absentia, including Compaore.
Compaore and his former right-hand man General Gilbert Diendere are charged with harming state security, complicity in murder, concealing bodies and witness tampering.
Compaore has repeatedly denied entrenched suspicions among Burkinabe that he ordered Sankara’s killing, while Diendere has pleaded not guilty.
On January 24, mutinous soldiers overthrew Compaore’s elected successor, Roch Marc Christian Kabore, amid rising public anger at his failure to stem a bloody jihadist insurgency.
They set up a military junta that has dissolved the government and parliament and suspended the constitution.
It has vowed to re-establish “constitutional order” within a “reasonable time”. It has also pledged to guarantee the “independence” of the judicial system.
But Farama argued that the independence of the court was guaranteed by the constitution.
As a result, hearings in the court should be suspended since the constitution itself has been suspended, he maintained.
Source: AFP