Thirty-seven people – including three Americans, a Briton, a Belgian and a Canadian national – have been sentenced to death over an attempt to overthrow the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The men were accused of leading an attack on both the presidential palace and the home of an ally of President Félix Tshisekedi in May.
Christian Malanga, a US national of Congolese origin, the suspected leader of the plot, was killed during the attack, along with five others.
In total 51 people were tried in a military court, with hearings broadcast on national TV and radio.
Malanga’s son Marcel, one of the US citizens sentenced to death, previously told the court that his father had threatened to kill him unless he took part.
His friend Tyler Thompson, was also given the death penalty. The pair, aged in their 20s, had played football together in Utah.
His stepmother Miranda Thompson in June told the BBC the family had “zero idea” how he had ended up in DR Congo.
“We were in complete shock as to what was happening, and the unknown. Everything we were learning was what we were getting off Google,” she said.
The third American, Benjamin Zalman-Polun, had business interests with Christian Malanga.
Also sentenced to death was Jean-Jacques Wondo, a dual Congolese and Belgian citizen.
Human Rights Watch previously described him as a prominent researcher on regional politics and security, and suggested the evidence connecting him to the coup attempt was thin.
Fourteen people were acquitted and freed.
Death sentences have not been carried out in DR Congo for roughly two decades – convicts who receive the penalty serve life imprisonment instead.
The government lifted this moratorium in March this year, citing the need to remove “traitors” from the nation’s dysfunctional army. However, no death penalties have been carried out since.
The attempted coup in question began in the capital, Kinshasa, in the early hours of 19 May. Armed men first attacked parliamentary speaker Vital Kamerhe’s home in Kinshasa then headed to the president’s official residence.
Witnesses say a group of about 20 assailants in army uniform attacked the palace and an exchange of gunfire followed.
An army spokesman later announced on national TV that security forces had stopped “an attempted coup d’etat”.
Additional reporting by Emery Makumeno in Kinshasa & Natasha Booty
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