WALIKALE, North Kivu — A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has sentenced 66 soldiers to death following a 12-day trial on charges including cowardice in the face of the enemy, military revolt and disobeying orders, Radio Okapi and RFI reported.
Source: Radio Okapi / RFI, Nov 8-9, 2026 (via Gnosis News)
The Goma Garrison Military Court, sitting in Walikale-Centre rather than at its usual location in Goma, handed down the verdict late on Friday, November 6, 2026. Radio Okapi reported the sentences on Sunday, November 8, and international outlets were still reporting them on Tuesday, November 10, including a Kinshasa-datelined report that day.
Source: Radio Okapi, Nov 8, 2026; The Insight International, Nov 10, 2026
All 66 condemned soldiers belonged to the Congolese army's 3415th Infantry Regiment. Four other soldiers were acquitted, including the captain responsible for the regiment's intelligence, and a sergeant received a 10-year prison sentence after the court found substantial mitigating circumstances, according to a statement from the army's 34th Military Region carried by the Congolese Press Agency (ACP) and reported by Radio Okapi.
Source: ACP / Radio Okapi, Nov 8, 2026 (via Clash Report)
Arrested after leaving a combat zone
Maj. Dieudonné Kasereka, communications officer for the 34th Military Region, told Radio Okapi the men were arrested on Tuesday, October 20 at Ngora after incidents reported at Ntoto, in the Wanianga sector of Walikale territory, where military police tried to stop soldiers leaving a combat zone; that account says one soldier and one civilian were killed in the incidents. The army statement said the soldiers were accused of abandoning their positions and fleeing during clashes with fighters of the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation, a rebel coalition that includes the M23 group.
Source: Radio Okapi, Nov 8, 2026; ACP statement via Clash Report, Nov 10, 2026
The prosecutor had asked for death for 70 of the 71 defendants and 10 years for an intelligence officer. By the verdict, Radio Okapi listed the convictions as military revolt, refusal to obey, cowardice before the enemy and wasted munitions. Earlier hearings had included murder charges, but the verdict report does not say the court convicted anyone of murder, and it does not say which charge each of the 66 was convicted of.
Source: Radio Okapi / RFI, Nov 8-9, 2026 (via Gnosis News)
What is solid
- A Goma garrison military court sitting in Walikale sentenced 66 soldiers of the 3415th Regiment to death on Friday, November 6, 2026, after a 12-day trial; four defendants were acquitted and one received 10 years (Radio Okapi, RFI and ACP).
- DR Congo lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in March 2024, and RFI counted at least 507 soldiers convicted since the start of 2025, including 381 death sentences.
- Amnesty International recorded no execution in DR Congo in 2025, according to RFI, and no execution resulting from the Walikale verdict has been confirmed.
What is only claimed
- A death sentence is not an execution: the Walikale reports do not say where the 66 men are held, whether appeals have been filed, or when a higher court would hear them.
- The full written judgment has not been made public in the reports available, so the evidence against each individual soldier cannot be independently assessed; earlier murder charges mentioned in hearings do not appear as convictions in the verdict report.
Background: eastern DR Congo has been fought over for years by the army and rebel coalitions including M23, and the government lifted a roughly two-decade moratorium on executions in March 2024, saying it needed to remove traitors from the army. Military courts have since handed down death sentences in a series of mass trials of soldiers accused of fleeing the front.
What happens next: the November 6 judgment was delivered by a court of first instance, and the reports available on November 10 had not established whether the condemned soldiers had filed appeals or when further proceedings would occur. The army has presented the trial as a discipline measure while its troops fight armed groups in the east; human-rights groups have previously criticised mass military trials and the return of death sentences in the country.