Third suspect in murder of UN pair dies in DR Congo custody

One of the suspected killers of two UN experts who were probing mass graves in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2017 has died while in custody, his lawyer said Tuesday.

"Jose Tshibuabua died at dawn this Tuesday in Kananga General Hospital, where he was admitted for emergency care" in the chief town of Kasai-Central province, lawyer Tresor Kabangue told AFP.

Tshibuabua was the third prime suspect in the murders of UN specialists Zaida Catalan and Michael Sharp to die in detention while on trial for two years before the military court in Kananga.

"Jose Tshibuabua was seriously ill. He could not even stand up to appear" at the court hearings, a source in the prison service told AFP.

The UN team of Catalan and Sharp, a Swedish woman of Chilean origin and an American man, has been investigating mass graves dug in a conflict between Congolese security forces and the local Kamwina Nsapu (Black Ant) rebellion in Kasai provinces.

When the two were murdered in March 2017, Tshibuabua was serving as an unpaid "volunteer collaborator" of the powerful National Intelligence Agency (ANR), according to testimony given in public hearings at the court.

Tshibuabua helped make travel preparations for Catalan and Sharp in a Kananga hotel by arranging for the motorcyclists who took them to the village of Moyo Musuile near a Roman Catholic mission at Bunkonde, where they were killed.

The violence in the region was sparked when the security forces on August 12, 2016, killed the tribal Kamwina Nsapu leader, a prominent regional opponent of the Kinshasa regime who urged an insurrection.