Congo military court sentences former President Kabila to death for treason

A high military court in Congo convicted former President Joseph Kabila of treason and war crimes Tuesday on accusations of collaborating with anti-government rebels and sentenced him to death.

It was not immediately clear how the sentence could be carried out because the whereabouts of Kabila, who has been on trial in absentia since July, have been unknown since he last was seen in public in a rebel-held city earlier this year. Kabila's political party called the verdict politically motivated.

The court in Kinshasa ordered his immediate arrest.

The government said Kabila collaborated with Rwanda and the Rwanda-backed rebel group M23, which seized key cities in a lightning assault in January in Congo's mineral-rich east.

Kabila has denied the allegations, though he expressed support for the rebels' campaign in an op-ed published in February in the South African newspaper Sunday Times.

The high military court in Kinshasa ruled Tuesday that Kabila was guilty of treason, war crimes, conspiracy and organizing an insurrection together with the M23. It also ordered Kabila to pay $29 billion in damages to Congo, as well as $2 billion to the country's province of North Kivu and $2 billion to South Kivu.

The court said prosecutors presented testimony implicating Kabila from Eric Nkuba, the imprisoned former chief of staff of rebel leader Corneille Nangaa. Nkuba was convicted on rebellion charges in August 2024.

The court cited Nkuba as saying that Kabila regularly communicated with Nangaa by phone about how to overthrow the government of current President Felix Tshisekedi.

The head of Kabila's People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy called the verdict “a political, unfair decision.”

“We believe that the clear intention of the dictatorship in power is to eliminate, to neutralize, a major political actor," the party's permanent secretary, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Richard Bondo, a lawyer who represented the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, said he was “satisfied” with the court's decision. “Justice rendered in the name of the Congolese people gives satisfaction to its people,” he added.

Kabila led Congo from 2001 to 2019. He took office at the age of 29 — after his father and former President Laurent Kabila was assassinated — and extended his mandate by delaying elections for two years after his term ended in 2017. His candidate lost in December 2018 to Kabila’s long-term political rival, Tshisekedi, who has ruled the country since 2019.

In May, the country’s Senate voted to repeal Kabila's immunity from prosecution, a move Kabila denounced at the time as dictatorial.

Kabila had lived outside of Congo in self-imposed exile but returned in April to Goma, one of the cities held by the rebel group. His current location is unknown.

Congo’s decades-long conflict escalated in January, when the M23 rebels advanced and seized the strategic city of Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu, which they took in February. The fighting has killed some 3,000 people and worsened what was already one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with around 7 million people displaced.

Lawyers and members of the public attend the trial of former Congolese President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025.(AP Photo/ Samy Ntumba Shambuyi)

FILE - Supporters of Joseph Kabila dance at a political rally held July 22, 2006, in the Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, file)

FILE - Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, listens after speaking to the 56th United Nations General Assembly, Nov. 11, 2001 at U.N. headquarters in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, file)

Military officers stand in the dock during the trial of former Congolese President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025 (AP Photo/ Samy Ntumba Shambuyi)

FILE - Former Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabila arrives to meet with religious leaders at his Kinyogote residence in M23 controlled Goma, Eastern Congo, May 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa, File)

Lieutenant General Mutombo Katalayi, president of the court, speaks during the verdict in the trial of former Congolese President Joseph Kabila at the military court in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025 (AP Photo/Samy Ntumba Shambuyi)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — An independent counsel has demanded a death sentence for former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on rebellion charges in connection with his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024.

The Seoul Central District Court said independent counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team made the request at a hearing Tuesday. Yoon was expected to make remarks there.

Removed from office last April, Yoon faces criminal trials over his martial law debacle and other scandals related to his time in office. Charges that he directed a rebellion are the most significant ones.

The court is expected to deliver a verdict on Yoon in February.

Yoon has maintained that his decree was a desperate yet peaceful attempt to raise public awareness about what he considered the danger of the liberal opposition Democratic Party, which used its legislative majority to obstruct his agenda and complicate state affairs.

Yoon called the opposition-controlled parliament “a den of criminals” and “anti-state forces.” But lawmakers rushed to object to the imposition of martial law in dramatic overnight scenes, and enough of them, including even those within Yoon’s ruling party, managed to enter an assembly hall to vote down the decree.

Yoon’s decree, the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea, brought armed troops into Seoul streets to encircle the assembly and enter election offices. That evoked traumatic memories of dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, when military-backed rulers used martial law and other emergency decrees to station soldiers, tanks and armored vehicles in public places to suppress pro-democracy protests.

Yoon’s decree and ensuing power vacuum plunged South Korea into political turmoil, halted the country’s high-level diplomacy and rattled its financial markets.

Yoon’s earlier vows to fight attempts to impeach and arrest him deepened the country’s political divide. In January last year, he became the country’s first sitting president to be detained.

Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs outside of Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

FILE - Then South Korea's ousted former President Yoon Suk Yeol who is facing charges of orchestrating a rebellion when he declared martial law on Dec. 3, arrives to attend his trial at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, May 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, Pool, File)