A photo combination of Italian Luca Attanasio and a medical vehicle of the North Kivu hospital loaded with the body of the driver on a road on the edge of the Virunga National Park near the village of Kibumba, some 25km from Goma, where the Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, his bodyguard and driver, were killed earlier when their car came under gunfire while he was on a field trip on February 22, 2021. File photo / AFP
Kinshasa: A judge in the Democratic Republic Congo on Wednesday postponed the indictment of five defendants accused in the killing of an ex-Italian ambassador after their lawyers failed to show up.
Luca Attanasio, Italy's former ambassador to the DRC, was among three people killed on February 22, 2021, when a United Nations convoy was ambushed in the country's troubled east.
A military tribunal examining the murders opened in the central African country's capital Kinshasa in October. The prosecution was due to wrap up its case on Wednesday and request a sentence.
But the presiding judge postponed the indictment by one week after the defendants appeared in court without lawyers, according to an AFP reporter present.
The defendants told the judge they did not know where they lawyers were and that they were too poor to pay their own legal fees.
An official close to the case, who declined to be named, said Congolese authorities had hired the defence lawyers but had not yet paid them after 16 court hearings.
The defence lawyers boycotted the indictment hearing in protest over lack of pay, the official explained.
Despite having vast mineral resources, the DRC is one of the poorest countries in the world, and is plagued by corruption, mismanagement and conflict.
