DR Congo court postpones verdict in Kabila treason trial

KINSHASA, DR CONGO - A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo postponed Friday the verdict in the trial of former president Joseph Kabila, who is accused of treason.

The court in Kinshasa, where Kabila went on trial in absentia in July, agreed to reopen proceedings after a last-minute call for the charge to be reclassified as espionage.

Kabila, 54, took power following his father Laurent Kabila's assassination in 2001 and governed the DRC until 2019, before leaving the country in 2023.

The ex-leader is accused of treason, war crimes and complicity with the M23 anti-government armed group, which has seized swathes of the resource-rich Congolese east with Rwanda's help.

In a surprise return in May, Kabila, who has lived outside the DRC since he left, arrived in the eastern city of Goma, which was captured by Rwanda-backed M23 fighters in January.

In a rare speech, he branded his successor's government a "dictatorship".

The upper house of the legislature lifted his immunity as senator for life to allow his prosecution.

Kabila is currently not in the DRC, sources close to him have told AFP.

A military prosecutor last month demanded the death penalty in the trial, which the ex-president has denounced, calling the courts "an instrument of oppression".

The DRC lifted a moratorium on the death penalty last year but no judicial executions have been carried out since.

At Friday's hearing, the state, which has filed a civil suit in the case, called for the treason charge to be reclassified as espionage.

Kabila is "a foreigner", the civil party's lawyer Jean Marie Kabengela said.

He had accused the ex-president during the trial of working "for the benefit of a foreign power".

Kabila speaks English and Swahili but does not speak Lingala, the language used in the capital Kinshasa, or French, the country's official language.

He was born in the east of the country but grew up in Tanzania.

The next hearing in the trial is set for 19 September.