The images, which had made the rounds on social networks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), testified to the violence of the events: we saw soldiers from an elite unit in uniform throwing around ten lifeless bodies at the back of a military vehicle after the violent repression of a demonstration in the east of the country.
On Monday October 2, Colonel Mike Mikombe was sentenced to death by the military justice system, which tried him for this intervention which, on August 30 in Goma, killed 57 civilians, according to the latest official report. Three other soldiers were sentenced to ten years in prison, and two were acquitted.
The lawyers of the convicts, who had pleaded for acquittal, announced their intention to appeal. The death penalty is often imposed in the DRC, but has not been applied for twenty years. It is systematically commuted to life imprisonment.
Friday, in his indictment, the senior prosecutor, who represents the public prosecutor, did not request the death penalty but life imprisonment against Colonel Mike Mikombe, the main accused. The court did not accept the accusation of “crime against humanity” but that of “murder”. The public prosecutor also requested sentences ranging from ten to twenty years for the other five defendants.
Since September 5, the six soldiers (including two senior officers) of the Republican Guard had to answer for this deadly operation launched against a religious sect which had called for demonstrations against the presence in the region of the United Nations (UN), of the force East Africa Regional Council and international NGOs. This intervention led to renewed tensions in Goma, in the heart of a region plagued by violence by armed groups and rebellions.
Unanswered questions
After the events, the government quickly announced arrests of soldiers and promised that justice would be done. The trial, however, did not answer all the questions about the circumstances of the killing.
The Minister of the Interior, Peter Kazadi, declared that the Republican Guard had intervened in retaliation for the lynching of a police officer by followers of the sect. However, the witnesses, including two colonels, affirmed at the hearing that the operation had been launched before the death of the police officer. The same witnesses also affirmed that before the killing, negotiations between the army and the faithful were progressing well, but that in the middle of the discussions the soldiers had opened fire on the unarmed followers.
The question remained whether Colonel Mikombe, the main accused, had given the order to shoot, and whether he had done so in response to orders or on his own initiative. At trial, he suggested that he had been misled by an “operational order” from the 34th military region (North Kivu) presenting the sect’s followers as “supplements” of the M23 and Rwandan army – who occupy entire sections of the province – responsible for “facilitating the infiltration of the enemy” by “sowing unrest in the city”.
Subsequently, he asked at the hearing that the military governor of North Kivu, recalled for “consultations” in Kinshasa after the killing and since replaced in Goma by another officer, be heard by the court. “We cannot sully the unit that is the Republican Guard before this august court because we must protect the governor! “, he said.