By David Smith
Two alleged mercenaries from Europe are facing the death penalty in the Democratic Republic of Congo after being accused of murder and spying.
Looking pale behind unkempt beards, Joshua French, 27, and Tjostolv Moland, 28, both from Norway, were charged with murder, attempted murder, espionage, conspiracy and armed robbery after their driver was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head in May this year.
Norwegians Tjostolv Moland (l) and Joshua French (r) attend a military tribunal in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo. Photograph: Thomas Hubert/Reuters
“May it please the garrison military court to say that the accusations against Tjostolv Moland and Joshua [French] are established and to sentence them … to the death penalty,” the prosecutor, Major Jean Blaise Bwa Mulundu, told the court last week, according to Reuters.
Norway has strongly expressed concerns that the men are not receiving a fair trial. French himself said: “I don’t think any recognised nation would accept this trial in any way or accept any of the evidence.”
A murky chain of events led the two men to the grim military courtoom of Kisangani in the lawless east of Congo.
French and Moland were reportedly in the country to set up their own security company. The website Private Military Herald, which monitors the private security industry, claimed that Norwegian military ID cards, counterfeit UN hats and employee ID badges with both correct and false names were found by police at an apartment shared by the two men in Uganda.
The employee badges were believed to use the logo of a Norwegian security company, Special Interventions Group (SIG), on false pretences. A source at SIG said: “We were supposed to have a partnership with these guys a year ago but it didn’t happen. They decided to try it for themselves and start their own company. Unfortunately they chose our name and used our ID cards.”
The source added: “We don’t believe for a second these guys killed anyone. They’re just kids who went abroad, tried to think big and set up a company. I don’t have a bad word to say about them. They loved Africa and they did not want to be mercenaries.”
French and Moland had previously served in Norway’s armed forces. Norwegian diplomats say there has been no contact between the accused and their country’s military or any other official organisation since 2007.
It is not clear what the two accused were doing in the area. Former soldiers are frequently taken on by private security companies who have stepped up interest in the region due to oil discoveries under Lake Albert, which lies on the border between Congo and Uganda.
French and Moland have said that 47-year-old driver Abedi Kasongo was shot and killed when their car was attacked by gunmen on the road, 60 miles east of the town of Kisangani.
The men were travelling in Congo’s north-eastern Orientale province, which is still unstable and plagued by armed groups six years after the country’s war officially ended. But the region is starting to attract investors after the discovery of billions of barrels of oil on the Ugandan side of the border by London-listed Tullow Oil and Heritage Oil.
The prosecution demanded last week that Norway pay Congo $500bn in damages over the incident.
Mulundu requested the death penalty for each of the five charges against the two defendants. The verdict is expected to be handed down by the military court this week.
