Former Central African Republic (CAR) leader, General Andre Kolingba, and about 20 army officers were sentenced to death in absentia on Monday following a failed coup attempt in May last year.
Kolingba, who led CAR as a military ruler from 1981 to 1993 before being toppled in multi-party elections by President Ange Felix Patasse, was sentenced to death after being pronounced ”guilty of undermining state security” by the criminal court in Bangui.
Twenty-one other coup plotters, including three of Kolingba’s sons, Army Major Anicet Saulet, who led another coup in 1996, and opposition lawmaker Charles Massi, were also sentenced to death by the court.
General Guillaume Lucien N’djengbot, who is close to Kolingba and for whom the prosecutor had on Friday called for the death penalty, was sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour.
The court also ordered the seizure of the property of any
defendant found guilty of undermining state security or complicity in undermining state security.
Around 580 soldiers were found guilty of ”desertion to take part in a coup” and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Arrest warrants were issued for all those sentenced, and they were stripped of their civil rights by the court.
The trial in absentia began Friday of more than 600 people who fled CAR after being accused of involvement in last year’s foiled bid to oust Patasse.
The accused had no legal representation at the trial. When the charges were read out at the start of Friday’s hearing, Kolingba and a dozen officers were singled out as the chief instigators of the botched coup.
Some 600 army officers, non-commissioned officers and civilians were named as their accomplices.
Witness testimonies gathered by a judicial committee set up to investigate the coup from civilians and soldiers, including some of the accused, were then read to the court. These too singled out Kolingba and some of his co-accused as being the masterminds of the putsch.
The court was reminded that Kolingba had admitted, days after the abortive May coup in a report on Radio France Internationale, that he had masterminded the plot to oust Patasse.
Chief prosecutor Joseph Bindoumi on Friday called for the death penalty against the coup’s masterminds.
The coup attempt was followed by nearly two weeks of deadly fighting and an exodus of tens of thousands of civilians from the capital, Bangui.
The cases of 82 defendants still in CAR, including former defence minister Jean Jacques Demafouth, resumed on Monday.
An impoverished landlocked country, CAR has been plagued by coups and frequent changes of government, nearly all of them military, since it gained independence from France in 1960. – Sapa-AFP