The has raised serious concerns about the Democratic Republic of Congo’s overall stability.
On Tuesday, a military court in the convicted Kabila in absentia of treason and war crimes — including charges of murder, sexual assault, torture and insurrection.
Kabila is accused of backing , which has seized control of large parts of the eastern North and South Kivu provinces, where the rebel group has established its own administrations.
In addition to being sentenced to death, Kabila has been ordered to pay approximately $33 billion (€28 billion) in damages to the state and to the provinces of North and South Kivu.
Incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi has gone as far as publicly accusing Kabila of being the mastermind behind the armed M23 group, which Kabila denies.
Fears of peace process collapse
Many of Kabila’s supporters believe that the ruling is politically motivated, stressing that it could derail ongoing peace efforts.
“We are very concerned about the sentencing of [Joseph Kabila] by the military court,” said Roger Mwinihire, a DRC politician aligned with Kabila. “This could end the process of peacefully resolving the country’s political and security crisis.”
Mwinihire told DW that the ruling undermines diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in eastern Congo, which has in its current form been raging on since 2022.
“We regret that our government is not weighing the consequences of the important decisions that are currently being taken in Kinshasa,” he added.
Ramazani Shadary, secretary general of Kabila’s PPRD party, also criticized the ruling, referring to it as an “adventurous decision by the judiciary.”
“This is a sham trial announced by the institutions of a dictatorial regime,” he told DW, adding that in his view the is part of a broader crackdown on political opposition.
“For us, this is the obvious will of the existing dictatorship to eliminate and neutralize an important political actor, an actor that is more indispensable than ever in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
Calls for accountability for hundreds of deaths
Some activists, however, support the ruling — people like Souzy Kisuki, who believes that Kabila is “playing a key role in the M23 rebellion, and therefore deserves this conviction.”
“Our common wish as Congolese would be to see Kabila condemned because we are tired of it [his actions]. Since 2014, he has been named as the mastermind of the massacres of civilians in Beni,” Kisuki told DW, referring to a region within North Kivu province in which over the past decade over 2,000 people have violently been killed by various rebel forces.
Kisuki meanwhile also doubts that the sentence will ever be enforced: “For me, this is a non-event, because even the current president of the Republic has declared that there is no justice in the DRC,” she said.
Political analyst Bob Kabamba echoed the same skepticism, highlighting the fact that there is a long history of unenforced death sentences in the DRC and adding that Kabila’s whereabouts remain unknown.
“It can therefore be assumed that this death sentence, like the others cannot be carried out,” Kabamba said.
Result of a longstanding rivalry
Kabila had briefly appeared in in May, where he attempted to mediate in the ongoing peace process; the move by the former leader reportedly angered officials in Kinshasa.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told DW that the military trial of Kabila marks the climax of a long-standing rivalry between him and President Tshisekedi:
“This is a culmination of a friction that started since the time President Tshisekedi became the head of Congo,” Dizolele said, warning however of the broader implications of the judgement.
“The DRC is a country that has been in transition for a long time now. The ruling has tremendous consequences. It is obvious that it is going to bring [up] a lot of frustration among supporters of Joseph Kabila.”
Despite his long tenure as president and despite still enjoying some popularity among certain parts of the population, Dizolele believes the conviction will not trigger any major unrest, as most Congolese view Kabila as a disappointment:
“He was in power for 18 years, and he did not deliver for the country. So people are not going to rally in his defense.”
In any event, the sentence against Kabila now makes his return to the country extremely unlikely.
Edited by: Sertan Sanderson
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