From left to right: Tyler Thompson Jr., Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun and Marcel Malanga to their release from a Congolese prison.
Document of the DRC government.
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Document of the DRC government.
Three Americans were sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of Congo for their role in a coup d’etat failed last year in the Central African country, was returned to the United States, a Congolese government spokesman.
The announcement came after President Trump’s principal advisor, Massad Boulos, went to the Congolese capital Kinshasa last week to discuss a putative agreement of American minerals in the DRC.
Congo President Felix Tshisekedi commits the sorrows of the three American citizens accused of having participated in the coup attempt before the arrival of Boulos.
Tina Salama said on Tuesday, Tina Salama, said on X that the three American men had been “evacuated to the United States to serve their sorrows”. Men are Marcel Malanga, 22, Tyler Thompson, 21, and Benjamin Zalman-Polun, 37.
The social media post was accompanied by photos showing a masked man guiding one of the American detainees chained in a jet.
The three American men are riding a plane in Kinshasa.
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The United States Embassy in Kinshasa confirmed that the men had been transferred to the American authorities.
State department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told journalists on Tuesday that the United States had strongly sentenced the armed attack and supported the Congolese government. “At the same time, we are looking for a coherent, compassionate and human treatment and a fair legal process in the name of these American citizens,” she said.
The three Americans were among the 37 sentenced to death by a military court in Kinshasa in connection with the attempted coup in tanned last year. Directed by Christian Malanga, a Congolese political exile which normally lived in Utah, the group of men attacked the house of a principal Congolese politician on May 19, 2024, before invading the troper presidential complex of Kinshasa.
There, they agitated banners and shouted hostile political slogans, according to images that the attackers themselves downloaded on social networks. Congolese security forces quickly overwhelmed them. At least six people were killed in the attempted buyout, including security agents displayed at the home of the targeted upper Congolese politician.
Christian Malanga was shot. The security forces captured his son, Marcel Malanga, as well as Thompson and Zalman-Polun, after them and others fled the presidential complex to the Congo river nearby.
The conditions for their initial arrest were brutal, according to images circulating online. A video showed that soldiers shooted a dead man trying to swim across the river while Zalman-Polun was seen naked on the bridge of a boat.
Thompson’s family had told journalists that they believed that their son was on vacation.
A military court began hearings last June and, in September, he exercised death sentences to 37 people, including the three Americans.
The Congo raised a moratorium for several decades on the death penalty last year in order to eliminate what the government called “betrayal”, although it has not yet carried out any executions.
Rear left row from right to right: Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, Marcel Malanga and Tyler Thompson, all American citizens, attend a verdict of the court in Congo, Kinshasa, on September 13, 2024, to participate in an attempted coup in May 2024.
Samy Ntumba Shambuyi / AP
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Samy Ntumba Shambuyi / AP
During the trial, American citizens told the judges that Christian Malanga had forced them to participate in the events of May 19 under the threat of a weapon.
None of the three understood the official language of the Congo, French and sometimes the evil to follow legal proceedings due to a lack of adequate interpreters.
In January, the military judges examining an appeal confirmed the initial death sentences.
The liberation of the Americans comes as the DRC tries to secure a mineral agreement with the Trump administration in exchange for security guarantees, although the details of this agreement remain vague.
The rebels of the M23 group, which the neighbor of Congo has supported Rwanda, has captured the two largest cities in the eastern country since January.
