Thirty-seven defendants, including three Americans, were sentenced to death today by a military court in Kinshasa in connection with the “coup attempt” that DR Congo’s army says it foiled last May.

“The court imposes the maximum possible penalty, the death penalty,” Major Freddie Ehume, the president of the court sitting at the Dolo military prison, repeated as he read the verdict for each of the accused. The trial had started in June, in a special area of ​​the prison where the defendants are held.

Those sentenced to death were found guilty of participating in a criminal organization, assault and terrorism, except for one. Of the 37 now on death row, three are Americans, born in the US, one Belgian, one British and one Canadian, who have taken citizenship of the DR Congo.

Their lawyers have already said they will appeal.

From them a total of 51 defendantsthe 14 were acquitted after the court accepted they had “no connection” to the case. The prosecution wanted the death penalty imposed on the 50 defendants, but not on the last one because he suffers from psychological problems, according to the medical opinion.

The trial did not shed light on the motives of the perpetrators, who were ill-prepared to overthrow a regime.

Late on the evening of May 19 in Kinshasa, in the suburb of Gobe, several dozen armed men wearing uniforms they attacked the house of a minister, Vital Kamerhewho was subsequently elected president of the Parliament. Two Camerhe police guards were killed. The attackers then stormed the Nation’s Palace, the historic building that houses the office of President Felix Tshisekendi, near the Congo River.

In videos from that night, members of the group can be seen holding the flag of Zaire, as the DR Congo was called when Mobutu, the dictator who was overthrown in 1997, was in power. They also declared the end of Tshisekendi’s regime, the who has ruled since 2019 and was comfortably re-elected to the presidency last December.

The flag in question and several dozen rifles were presented at trial as evidence.

The group’s action ended with the intervention of security forces who arrested some forty men and killed four others, including their leader, Christian Malanga, a 41-year-old Congolese resident in the US.

The army spokesman spoke at the time of an “attempted coup that was suppressed in its birth” while later the government described the event as “an attempt to destabilize the institutions”.

During the trial, the defendants limited themselves to blaming the group’s leader. All of them pleaded not guilty and their lawyers asked for their release.