The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) handed out 37 death sentences in connection to the May coup attempt against President Felix Tshisekedi. Six of the defendants sentenced to death are foreign nationals, and three of them are Americans. The coup attempt on May 19, 2024, was masterminded by an eccentric opposition leader and businessman named Christian Malanga, whom security forces killed during the attempt.
Malanga was a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived in Utah for more than 20 years.
He was able to rope a few U.S. citizens into his coup plot, which they claimed he misrepresented as a lucrative security contract or a luxury vacation to Africa.
Some of the people Malanga tried to recruit were high school football teammates of his son, Marcel Malanga. One of those teammates, Daniel Gonzalez, said Malanga offered to pay him up to $100,000 for working four months in the DRC as a security guard. Gonzalez declined the offer because the details sounded sketchy to him.
Marcel Malanga, now 21, was one of the three American citizens sentenced to death on Friday. The other two were Tyler Thompson Jr., 21, a classmate of Marcel’s who reportedly thought he was joining the Malanga family on an African vacation, and Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, 36, a business associate of Christian Malanga.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Friday that the Biden administration was aware three Americans have been sentenced to death but has not yet attempted to intervene in the cas.