In March, the Congolese government lifted a moratorium on the death penalty that had been in place since 2003.
A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has sentenced 26 people to death accused of involvement in armed groups including the M23, following a high-profile trial that began late last month.
Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC), was found guilty of war crimes, participation in an insurrection and treason.
Nangaa and 20 other defendants were sentenced to death in absentia on Thursday as they are currently on the run.
The five defendants who were present at the trial have five days to appeal the sentence, the court president said.
The prosecutor in the trial, which began on July 24, had asked for the death penalty for 25 of the defendants and 20 years in prison for one of them.
Nangaa, a former head of the Democratic Republic of Congo's electoral commission, launched the AFC politico-military movement in December with the aim of uniting armed groups, political parties and civil society against the government.
One of its members is the M23 armed group, accused of mass killings in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo during decades of conflict.
Key M23 figures on trial include its chairman Bertrand Bisimwa, military chief Sultani Makenga and spokesmen Willy Ngoma and Lawrence Kanyuka.
In a text message from an undisclosed location, Nangaa told The Associated Press news agency that “this nauseating judicial saga reinforces our struggle for democratic normality in Congo.”
In March, the Congolese government defied criticism from human rights organizations and lifted a moratorium on the death penalty that had been in place since 2003, with the aim of prosecuting military personnel accused of treason.
President Felix Tshisekedi, along with U.S. and United Nations experts, accuses neighboring Rwanda of providing military backing to the Tutsi-led M23, which has seized huge swathes of territory in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since late 2021.
The instability of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has been plagued by conflict for more than 30 years, is due to complex and deep-rooted factors, as well as a multitude of actors.
The M23 is one of a number of rebel groups active in the Democratic Republic of Congo's restive east, many of them legacies of a regional conflict that erupted in the 1990s following the fall of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
Tshisekedi accused his predecessor Joseph Kabila of preparing an “insurrection” and of belonging to the AFC.
“The AFC is him,” he told Congolese radio station Top Congo on Tuesday in Belgium, where he is receiving medical treatment.
In 2019, Kabila handed over power to Tshisekedi, a former opponent who was declared the winner of the disputed presidential election in December 2018.
Several members of Kabila's Popular Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD) have joined the AFC and are awaiting the verdict of a military court in Kinshasa, where they could face the death penalty.
