KANANGA, June 9 -- Nine years after two United Nations investigators were marched off a dirt road in central Congo and shot dead in a field, a military court has condemned 54 people to death for their killing. The ruling closes the case in the eyes of the law. The men most likely to have ordered the murders were never in the dock.

Michael Sharp, an American, and Zaida Catalan, a Swedish-Chilean, were members of a UN panel investigating violence in the Kasai region in March 2017, where government forces and the Kamuina Nsapu militia were killing civilians in large numbers. The pair were stopped by armed men, led into a field and executed; their bodies were found sixteen days later. The High Military Court in Kananga has now handed down it...