By Zweli Martin Dlamini

MBABANE:A Military Court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has sentenced former President Joseph Kabila to death for supporting M23 Rebels, Aljazeera reported on Tuesday evening.

It has been reported that, Lieutenant General Joseph Mutombo Katalayi who presided over the Military Tribunal said on Tuesday that, Kabila was convicted of various crimes, including treason, crimes against humanity, murder, sexual assault, torture and insurrection.

“In applying Article 7 of the Military Penal Code, it imposes a single sentence, namely the most severe one, which is the death penalty,” Katalayi said while delivering the verdict.

Kabila, who served as President from 2001 to 2019, had left the DRC in 2023, but recently visited Goma in the east of the country, an area controlled by the M23 rebel group.

But the former President went on trial in absentia in July for his alleged support for the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, who seized large swaths of territory in the eastern DRC this year, Rwanda consistently denied providing military backing to the M23, but United Nations experts say its army played a “critical” role in the group’s offensive.

“There was no immediate information about Kabila’s whereabouts after the military court’s verdict on Tuesday. The ex-President did not attend the trial and was not represented by legal counsel. Neither he nor his representatives were immediately available for requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.Kabila had previously slammed the case against him, calling the courts “an instrument of oppression,” Aljazeera reported.