Twelve Days in a Walikale Courtroom
A military court that carries Goma’s name sat in Walikale-Centre and, late on Friday 6 November, handed down one of the harshest single verdicts the Congolese army has seen in this war. Sixty-six soldiers of the 3415th regiment of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo were sentenced to death. A sergeant received ten years of penal servitude, with what the court described as broad mitigating circumstances. Four of the accused were acquitted, among them the captain in charge of intelligence for the same regiment.
The Goma garrison military court, sitting at first instance in a criminal matter, had examined the case under an expedited procedure. The soldiers were prosecuted for cowardice, military revolt and refusal to obey. The hearings also took up accusations of cowardice in the face of the enemy and of wasting war ammunition. The verdict was made public over the weekend.
Arrested at Ngora, Tried for What Happened at Ntoto
According to Major Dieudonne Kasereka, the communications officer of the 34th military region, the condemned soldiers were arrested on 20 October at Ngora after incidents reported at Ntoto, in the Wanianga sector of Walikale territory, in North Kivu. One official account spells the village Ntonto. The two names refer to the same reported scene of the alleged offenses.
The group did not arrive in court all at once. An army communique said the soldiers were first 54 in number, then joined by 16 others and by further men arrested later. By the time the trial opened, 71 people stood accused. The military prosecutor asked for the death penalty against 70 of them and for a ten-year sentence against one intelligence officer. The court did not follow that request to the letter. It acquitted four people, including the regiment’s intelligence captain, and gave the ten-year term to a sergeant rather than to the officer the prosecutor had singled out.
A Trial That Overran Its Own Timetable
The proceedings were supposed to last ten days. They took twelve. Over that period, the court examined the evidence, heard the parties, and then retired to deliberate. The choice of an expedited, flagrante procedure signaled that the army wanted a swift example, not a drawn-out court-martial. Swift is not the same as transparent. The public accounts describe the charges, the dates, the regiment and the sentences. They do not describe, in any detail, what took place at Ntoto: whether the accused fled a position, refused an order, turned on their own commanders, wasted ammunition, or some combination of those things.
That gap matters. A death sentence for cowardice in the face of the enemy is among the most severe judgments a military court can issue. Without a clear public record of the underlying events, civilians in Walikale and families of the condemned are asked to accept the severity of the punishment on the authority of the institution that failed to hold the ground in the first place.
Discipline as a Message
Military authorities said the trial was meant to strengthen discipline inside the armed forces while operations against armed groups continue in the east of the country. That is a familiar purpose. Armies under pressure often reach for exemplary punishment when they cannot point to exemplary victories. North Kivu remains the scene of a long conflict with a shifting cast of armed groups, and Walikale territory is part of that front. The official statements do not explain why a court that bears Goma’s name sat in Walikale-Centre.
Death sentences on this scale also raise a question that the communiques do not answer: whether they will be carried out. A sentence handed down is not the same as an execution. Even as a signal, 66 capital convictions in a single verdict tell soldiers what the institution now considers the price of breaking ranks.
What the Acquittals Suggest
The four acquittals, including that of the regiment’s intelligence captain, cut against a simple story of a whole unit gone bad. The prosecutor had wanted almost everyone condemned. The court drew a line around at least some of the accused, which suggests that the evidence was not uniform and that the bench was prepared, in a limited way, to distinguish among the 71. The sergeant who received ten years rather than death is another such distinction. These details do not soften the headline. They do show that the trial produced more than a single, identical fate.
Still, the public knows far more about the sentences than about the night or the day at Ntoto that produced them. In a conflict where armed groups, community militias and the national army all claim to speak for order, that imbalance is not a small thing. Justice that cannot be inspected is easily confused with revenge in uniform.
An Army That Punishes Fear
The structural problem laid bare at Walikale is not only indiscipline. It is an army asked to hold a vast, hostile east with units that, on the state’s own account, sometimes refuse orders, break and run, or turn inward. Capital punishment can terrify a barracks. It cannot by itself put ammunition where it is needed, pay soldiers on time, or make a regiment trust the officers who send it forward. If the condemned men did abandon their positions, the people of Wanianga have a right to see that treated as a crime. They also have a right to ask why so many soldiers in a single regiment reached the point of revolt or flight. A state that answers fear only with death sentences has not yet answered the question of how it intends to win, or even hold, the war those men were sent to fight.
