A high military court in Kinshasa has sentenced on Tuesday, September 30, former Congolese President Joseph Kabila to death after convicting him of “treason, war crimes, conspiracy and organising an insurrection alongside the M23 rebel group”.
Prosecutors accused Kabila of collaborating with Rwanda and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, who seized key cities in eastern Congo in January. The former leader has been on trial in absentia since July, and his whereabouts remain unknown since his last public appearance in a rebel-controlled city earlier this year. The court also ordered his immediate arrest and imposed $29 billion in damages to the Congolese state, plus an additional $4 billion to the provinces of North and South Kivu.
The ruling cited testimonies from Eric Nkuba, a former chief of staff to rebel leader Corneille Nangaa, who claimed Kabila regularly communicated with Nangaa to plan the overthrow of President Félix Tshisekedi’s government. Kabila, who led Congo from 2001 to 2019, denied the allegations but publicly expressed support for the rebels’ campaign in a February op-ed. His political party, the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy, condemned the verdict as “a political, unfair decision,” with party secretary Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary accusing the current administration of seeking to eliminate a major political rival.
Kabila’s fall from grace comes after the Senate lifted his immunity in May, paving the way for prosecution. He had returned briefly from self-imposed exile to Goma in April, shortly before rebel forces escalated their offensive, seizing Goma and Bukavu and triggering renewed conflict that has killed some 3,000 people and displaced seven million. While government lawyers hailed the court’s decision as justice for the Congolese people, questions linger over how the death sentence might be enforced, given Kabila’s unknown location and the volatile security landscape in eastern Congo.