The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has commuted the death sentences of three Americans convicted of attempting a coup to life imprisonment, days before US government officials are due to visit the central African country. <\/p>\n
The Americans, Marcel Malanga, Tyler Thompson Jr., and Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun were among 37 people handed death sentences by a military court in September following last year\u2019s failed coup attempt led by Malanga\u2019s father, Christian. <\/p>\n
The putschists had targeted the country\u2019s presidential palace and the residence of Congolese politician Vital Kamerhe in an attempt to overthrow the government in May 2024. <\/p>\n
At least six people, including Christian Malanga, an opposition politician who livestreamed the coup attempt, were killed in a gun battle <\/strong>with <\/strong>presidential guards. <\/p>\n Salama said the clemency decision was not made to placate the US, with whom the DRC has sought a minerals-for-security partnership. It comes as war rages in the country\u2019s resource-rich eastern region between government forces and a Rwanda-backed rebel group. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have no deal with the Americans at this stage on any American intervention,\u201d Salama said. <\/p>\n The new US Senior Adviser for Africa Massad Boulos and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Corina Sanders will travel to the DRC Thursday, the State Department announced this week. <\/p>\n The officials aim to \u201dadvance efforts for durable peace in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and to promote US private sector investment in the region,\u201d it noted. They also plan to visit neighboring Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has commuted the death sentences of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}