A Congolese military court sentenced Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni to death Friday for his role in the 2017 murders of UN experts Zaida Catalan and Michael Sharp.
Mambweni was first convicted in 2022 and got 10 years for failing to help people in danger. Prosecutors appealed, arguing he did more than that. The High Military Court in Kinshasa agreed and found him guilty of the war crime of murder for helping orchestrate the killings. Congo hasn’t carried out an execution since 2003, so the sentence will likely become life in prison.
Catalan, a Swedish-Chilean, and Sharp, an American, were investigating mass killings in Kasai when Kamuina Nsapu militia fighters stopped them at a bridge near Moyo-Musila on March 12, 2017. The experts were taken into the bush and shot. Their bodies were found 16 days later.
The court also upheld death sentences for dozens of militia fighters. That part closes nearly 9 years of legal proceedings.
But families and rights groups say questions remain. Catalan’s sister welcomed the “conspiracy” finding but said justice is incomplete. Court recordings allegedly had Mambweni worrying the UN experts could expose efforts to hide mass graves. Human Rights Watch said the 2022 trial ignored video evidence of government agents directing the experts toward the ambush.
“The evidence suggests this was a state crime,” said Paul Nsapu Mukulu of Congo’s National Human Rights Commission. “And a state crime is not easily dealt with.”
