Congo renews death sentence on Norwegian mercenaries

Joshua French and Tjostolv Moland face death penalty for a second time after a similar verdict last year was overturned

Two Norwegian ex-soldiers have been sentenced to death for a second time in
Democratic Republic of the Congo by a military tribunal.

Joshua French, 28, who has dual citizenship with Britain and briefly served in the British army, and Tjostolv Moland, 29, were originally found guilty of murder and espionage by a Congolese court last year.

The men, who had been working as private military contractors in other countries and were operating in Congo under murky circumstances, denied shooting dead their driverAbedi Kasongo in May 2009. They claimed bandits killed him.

During the first trial the court also fined Norway $60m (£41m), alleging that the Norwegian men were spies.

The death sentences were upheld on appeal, but in April a military court in the capital Kinshasa overturned the convictions for technical reasons and ordered a retrial with fresh judges.

That took place in the north-eastern city of Kisangani, near where Kasongo was killed. Colonel Pierre Agabu, the prosecutor, said today that French and Moland had again been sentenced to death for murder, attempted murder, criminal association and spying.

The original fine, which was calculated to represent one dollar per Congolese citizen, was also upheld, with the Norwegian government jointly liable. A payment of $4.5m (£3m) was due to Kasongo's widow and his father, the court ruled, with a further $100,000 (£68,000) payable to the Kisangani drivers' association.

French and Moland, who had tried to establish a security company in Uganda early in 2009, crossed the border on motorcycles into eastern Congo, a highly unstable part of the country, in April that year.

Two weeks later Kasongo, who had been hired as their driver, was found dead beside a road. The Norwegians, who fled the scene – fearing for their lives, they said – were arrested separately several days later.

In the original trial, prosecutors claimed that French and Moland were carrying military ID cards at the time of their arrest. They produced a photograph allegedly taken by French that showed Moland grinning widely as he washed blood from Kasongo's Toyota Landcruiser on the day he was killed.

British legal charity Reprieve today described the court proceedings as a "show trial" and alleged the prosecution witnesses were bribed with large sums of money.

"This farce of a trial would be comical if the stakes weren't so tragically high," said Reprieve campaigner Tineke Harris. "Each time the military prosecution changes their theory, the witnesses all obligingly change their story. It is now clear why the DRC's own constitution forbids the military from administering justice."

The case has attracted huge media coverage in Norway and strong criticism of Congo from the Norwegian government. Norway says the men have had no ties to it since 2007 when they served in the elite Telemark battalion.

The Foreign Office said it was disappointed at the latest verdict and would work to ensure the execution was not carried out. In recent years most death sentences issued in Congo have been commuted to life imprisonment.

Reprieve said Moland had been extremely ill in jail after contracting celebral malaria and was delusional during the first trial and appeal. It said French, who had a British father and spent part of his childhood in Margate, was forced to sign a confession after being beaten.