InsiderBLM Africa
Six men were given life sentences for the 2021 assassination of the Italian ambassador by a military court in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The six accused were originally targeted for the death penalty by public prosecutors who claimed they belonged to a “criminal gang.”
On February 22, 2021, Luca Attanasio was one of three victims who were shot dead when a UN convoy was ambushed in the DRC’s unrest-ridden east.
Driver Mustapha Milambo and Italian police officer Vittorio Iacovacci were the other victims.
The six Congolese men’s attorneys informed AFP on Friday that they intended to challenge the life sentences.
While one of the men is on the run, the other five are being detained in a prison in Kinshasa.
The prosecution painted the defendants during earlier hearings as criminals who had originally planned to kidnap the ambassador and demand a $1 million ransom.
The defendants, who were detained in January 2022, denied any wrongdoing and claimed that torture was used to coerce their initial confessions.
Additionally, their attorneys pushed for acquittal, arguing that the prosecution had not provided sufficient evidence to back up the murder accusations.
The military tribunal also granted Italy damages on Friday in the amount of $2 million Congolese francs.
Armed groups, many of which are left over from local wars that broke out in the late 1990s and early 2000s, prey on much of eastern DRC.
In the unstable area, militia attacks on civilians are frequent.
According to the UN, the DRC has observed a de facto moratorium on the death penalty since 2003, but judges still sentence people to death.
