(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)
On this day in 2000, a 14-year-old boy from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was executed by firing squad only thirty minutes after his conviction by the Congolese Cour D’ordre Militaire, or Military Order Court. The teen, a child soldier known only as Kasongo, was found guilty with four other soldiers for the murder of a driver.
Amnesty International noted (pdf) that the DRC imposed the sentence in spite of the fact that it signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which prohibit the death penalty for persons under the age of 18, and in spite of the fact that the DRC’s Minister for Human Rights had in 1999 promised a moratorium on executions.
Under Congolese law, those convicted by the Cour D’ordre Militaire can appeal to the President for clemency. Since Kasongo’s sentence was carried out so quickly, however, it’s doubtful the President heard his appeal.
In 2001, the DRC told the United Nations that all other child soldiers sentenced to death have been pardoned. Why Kasongo was excepted from this rule, no one knows. The military courts that convicted him were abolished in 2003.
On this day..
- 2007: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, Saddam Hussein aides - 2020
- 1870: Sylvain Salnave, deposed Haitian president - 2019
- 1811: The slaves of the German Coast Uprising - 2018
- 1648: Francis Ferdinand de Capillas, protomartyr of China - 2017
- 1784: Cassumo Garcelli, a Tuscan sailor on Boston Common - 2016
- 1944: Zinaida Portnova, Komsomol hero - 2015
- 1973: Lim Seng, under Philippines martial law - 2014
- 69: Galba, in the Year of the Four Emperors - 2013
- 1999: Recak Massacre - 2012
- 2009: A day in the death penalty around the world - 2010
- 1895: Charles Stokes, in the heart of darkness - 2009
- 1943: Sue Logue, George Logue and Clarence Bagwell - 2008
- Themed Set: The Spectacle of Private Execution in America - 2008