3 Americans sentenced to death in failed coup attempt trial in DRC

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — A military tribunal in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday handed down death sentences to 37 people, including three US citizens, for their role in a failed coup in the central African nation this summer.

“The court pronounces the strongest sentence: the death penalty,” said Major Freddy Ehume, the president of the tribunal, which was held under a Khaki-green tent in the courtyard of the capital Kinshasa’s Ndolo military prison.

The sentencing ends three months of hearings into the events of May 19, when a group of armed men led by Congolese political exile and longtime US resident Christian Malanga staged an bungled attempt to overthrow the government of President Felix Tshisekedi.

That night, Malanga and several dozen men first attacked the home of senior politician Vital Kamerhe, a close Tshisekedi ally, in the capital Kinshasa, before invading a sprawling presidential complex in the city center. There, according to footage Malanga live streamed on social media, they unfurled flags and chanted anti-government slogans.

But Congolese troops quickly took back control -- killing Malanga in the process. He was one of at least six people who lost their lives during the coup attempt, according to the Congolese. Innocent victims were also killed. A security guard posted to Kamerhe’s house was shot dead, as was a man whom the group stopped at random on the road in order to steal his jeep.

In the immediate aftermath of the coup, security forces caught three Americans, along with dozens of others, on the banks of the nearby Congo River, trying to flee the presidential complex.

Christian Malanga’s son, 22-year-old Marcel Malanga, was among those caught. As was his close friend from Utah, 21-year-old Tyler Thompson, and another American, 36-year-old Maryland native Benjamin Zalman-
Polun.

Thompson’s family had told reporters they believed their son was on vacation.

Footage that circulated on social media -- and which was shown during the subsequent trial hearings -- suggested the brutal conditions of their arrest. In one video, Zalman-Polun lies naked on the planks of a riverboat as excited and screaming soldiers shoot a man trying to swim away.

Congolese security forces rounded up dozens of people in the aftermath of the attempted coup, placing a total of 51 people on trial in Kinshasa on charges of murder, terrorism, criminal association, among others, which carry the death penalty.

Although it formally kept capital punishment on the books, Congo had maintained a decades-long moratorium on the death penalty until March, when the government lifted the measure in a bid to root out what it termed ‘treachery’.

The coup trial in Kinshasa’s Ndolo military prison began in June, after a period of several weeks in which the defendants were held incommunicado. Called before the bar, many testified to having been tortured by military intelligence agents in detention.

Youssouff Ezangi, a Congolese-born British national whom the Congolese authorities presented as one of the coup’s main leaders, initially appeared in court with his arms covered in black bruises.

The US citizens also testified that their statements had been extracted under duress, and without the presence of an interpreter. “At the first underground place we were at, we were getting beaten and tortured,” said Marcel Malanga, calmly, during one court hearing in August.

Throughout the trial, the defendants, like Tyler Thompson,  mostly stuck to the same story - that Christian Malanga forced them to take part.

According to Thompson, Christian Malanga woke him up on the night of the attempted coup and threatened him at gunpoint.

"He had not said anything about any of this happening until that night," he told the court. " To my knowledge we were here on vacation to meet him, so I did not see him as a threat. The only thing he told me is that I must do everything as he says or else I will die.”

Translation issues also plagued the trial’s opening, with the first army-provided interpreter barely able to understand basic English. The accused US citizens are unable to speak either Congo’s official language of government, French, or Kinshasa’s dominant language Lingala.

The three Americans, however, gave the same account of the events of the night of May 19, telling the court that Christian Malanga had forced them to take part at gunpoint, and that they had feared for their lives.

Most of the Congolese nationals offered a similar story. Mainly recruited from western Congo, the majority said that Christian Malanga had hired them to work for his NGO, mentioning nothing about his political aims.

But the court dismissed this defense, and it didn't directly respond to arguments by defense lawyers that testimony extracted under torture is illegitimate.

On Friday, the court found every member of the alleged attacking group -- including the three US citizens; one Canadian; and Ezangi, the British national -- guilty on all counts.

Jean-Jacques Wondo, a Belgian national who did not take part in the attack, was also condemned to death, for allegedly being the “intellectual author” of the events. A former advisor to the Congolese secret service, the authorities accuse him of wiping his telephone the day after the attack and of having maintained contact with Malanga through an intermediary. He, as well as all the other defendants, fiercely contested the claim.

Fourteen people, mostly those rounded up mistakenly after the coup attempt, were acquitted. Ehume, the tribunal president, said that he and the four other judges had arrived at their decision through a secret ballot.

But one defense lawyer in the coup case, who declined to be named to protect his client, was deeply skeptical. “This was superficial, the court didn’t delve into the heart of the case,” the lawyer said. “They had a decision in their pocket.”

The counsel for Marcel Malanga, Sylva Mbikayi, said he was “stupefied” by the sentence and vowed to appeal. “This is a shameful decision, stained by a lot of bad faith on the part of the tribunal”.