GOMA, Congo, Aug 28 (Reuters) - A Congolese military court convicted and sentenced to death four people on Tuesday for the murder of U.N. radio journalist Serge Maheshe, who was shot dead in the eastern town of Bukavu in June, police said. Maheshe was editor-in-chief in Bukavu for Radio Okapi, a United Nations-backed station set up to help bolster the peace process following Democratic Republic of Congo's 1998-2003 war. "The verdict was pronounced today, and the capital sentence was passed," General Gaston Luzembo, South Kivu province's top police official, told Reuters by phone from Bukavu, the provincial capital. "The four were the two assassins and the two who ordered the killing," Luzembo said. Maheshe, one of at least four journalists murdered in Congo since 2005, was leaving a friend's home in Bukavu on the evening of June 13 when two men in uniform asked him his name and shot him in the legs and chest. U.N. officials have said Maheshe was not robbed and the assailants left others with him unharmed. Two demobilised soldiers were convicted of carrying out the murder while Serge Muhima and Alain Mulimdi Shamavu, two of Maheshe's close friends who were with him at the time of his death, were found guilty of organising the contract killing. The trial, before a military tribunal, opened just a day after Maheshe's murder, sparking criticism early on from human rights campaigners that the process was being rushed through.
