Marcel Malanga, son to the late Christian Malanga who instigated a coup d’etat attempt in Kinshasa on May 19, 2024, has claims he was forced by his father to participate in the operation on the ill-fated day.
The 21-year old was part of the group led by Christian Malanga, a former Congo military personnel, who momentarily controlled the Presidential office at the Palais de la Nation in Kinshasa before he was killed by the armed forces.
Marcel Malanga was arrested along with two other fellow American citizens after attempting to flee the nation via Congo Brazzaville.
While the public prosecutor has already prescribed a death sentence for Marcel Malanga and his co-accused Americans, investigations into the case of the failed coup as well as the attack on National Assembly Vital Kamerhe’s residence continued this Friday, July 5, 2024.
At the hearing held Ndolo Military Prison, Malanga claimed to have been forced to join the coup attempt operation after arriving in the DR Congo to meet his father whom he had not seen for three years.
“Today we were talking about hearing Mr. Marcel Malanga who presented the facts from the perspective from which he had to experience these events. Marcel simply said that he had nothing to do with what happened, he was forced into it like everyone else” Marcel Malanga’s lawyer Sylva Mbikayi told the court.
“He came here to Congo, he did not come to carry out an attack or an overthrow of power. But he came simply to visit his father, a father he last saw in 2021 for a short period and the father who left him when he was 16 years old.”
He continued: “That is how when he came to Congo, it was with great joy to find his father again. That is how they were housed, he and his friend Taylor at the Momo 19 hotel in Ngaliema. And very unfortunately on the night of the 18th, they were abruptly woken up by his father. And his father forced him to wear outfits and get on a bus where there were all these people. So everything that happened after that, he says it was his father who did the whole event until they went to the Palais de la Nation. He was only a victim of his father’s influence.”
Marcel Malanga is part of a group 51 individuals that have been charged in the coup attempt case and faces several offences including terrorism, illegal possession of weapons and munitions of war, attempted murder, criminal conspiracy, murder and financing of terrorism.
