Former Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila has been sentenced to death.

BBC reported Kabila's conviction on Tuesday, September 30.

The media platforms said Kabila was sentenced in absentia for war crimes and treason. The charges concern accusations that Kabila has been supporting the M23, a rebel group who have wreaked devastation across the country's eastern region.

Also, the former African leader was found guilty of charges that included murder, sexual assault, torture and insurrection.

Lieutenant-General Joseph Mutombo Katalayi, who presided over the tribunal, said while delivering the verdict: ”In applying Article 7 of the Military Penal Code, it imposes a single sentence, namely the most severe one, which is the death penalty."

Kabila was also ordered to pay around $50 billion in various damages to the state and victims. Legit.ng reports that the 54-year-old had lived outside of Congo in self-imposed exile but returned in April to Goma, one of the Congolese cities held by the M23 rebel group.

DR Congo’s government said Kabila, who ruled the country between 2001 and 2019, collaborated with Rwanda and the M23 rebel group that seized key cities in eastern Congo in January in a lightning assault.

Kabila has denied the allegations.

Meanwhile, leaders of Kabila’s People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy called the verdict “a political, unfair decision.”

Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, the party’s permanent secretary, said in an interview with The Associated Press: “We believe that the clear intention of the dictatorship in power is to eliminate, to neutralise, a major political actor."

But for Richard Bondo, a lawyer who represented the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, he said he was “satisfied” with the court’s decision. His words: “Justice rendered in the name of the Congolese people gives satisfaction to its people."