Joshua Olav Daniel Hodne French (born 7 April 1982) is a Norwegian-British man who was convicted of murder in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He worked as a security contractor with his friend Tjostolv Moland when they were arrested in May 2009, and he was later convicted of attempted murder, armed robbery, the formation of a criminal association and espionage for Norway, of which he and Moland were found guilty and sentenced to death. In 2014 he was also convicted of the murder of Moland. He was released in 2017 after serving 8 years of his sentence, and returned to Norway.
The trial caused controversy in Norway and Europe, as his mother claimed a lack of physical evidence, and "a clear economic motive from the Congolese government".
Biography
Early life
Joshua French grew up in the municipality of Re in Norway's Vestfold county. His mother is Norwegian and his father is British. French has dual Norwegian and British citizenship.
French served in the Norwegian Armed Forces until 2006 and was also trained as a paratrooper in the British Army. In 2006, he was admitted to the Telemark Battalion, the Norwegian Army's elite infantry unit, but was fired in 2007 when he and Moland were accused of having recruited military personnel into employment with private security companies. He has not had any military affiliation since 2007.
Murder and conviction
After resigning from the army, French and Moland continued working in the private security sector, specializing in contracts in Africa. On 5 May 2009, their hired driver, 47-year-old Abedi Kasongo, was shot and killed near Bafwasende, Tshopo District, Orientale Province, Democratic Republic of Congo. French was arrested on 9 May in the Epulu game reserve, around from Kisangani. Moland was arrested two days later in the Ituri Province, a few hundred kilometres farther northeast. The men claimed that their driver was murdered by gunmen who waylaid them, and claimed they had escaped the site due to fear that the gunmen would return for them.
On 8 September 2009, they were both found guilty and sentenced to death by a military tribunal in the regional capital, Kisangani. The DRC government considered the defendants to be active duty Norwegian soldiers, contradicting the Norwegian government's insistence that they had had no connection with Norway's military since 2007. French also claimed that an autopsy was not performed on the murder victim. In 2014 French was also convicted of the murder of Moland. The trial received massive media coverage in Norway, with several forensic and legal experts calling for the Norwegian government to interfere with what they considered a "theatrical trial" in an attempt to extort money from the government.
Post-conviction and Moland's death
French and Moland began serving their sentence in Kisingani in 2009. While they were sentenced to death the execution of prisoners is uncommon in Congo and the sentence was by many considered "life in prison" rather than death. In 2011, they were transferred from the prison in Kisigani to the Ndolo prison in Kinshasha.
During a state visit to DRC in 2013 French President Francois Hollande suggested that French and Moland should be moved from their six-man prison cell. Five days later the two prisoners were transferred to a shared "private" cell. Britain's Foreign Ministry had requested intervention by Hollande, given French's status as a British national. Later the same year, Bård Vegar Solhjell (Norwegian Minister of the Environment), who was in DRC for talks on rain forest projects, discussed the prisoners with authorities hoping to push for a potential transfer to a prison in Norway.
On 18 August 2013, Moland was found dead in his cell. French, who slept with ear-plugs, had noticed that Moland got out of bed. When Moland did not return from the adjoining bathroom French woke up and found his cellmate dead. The prison officials were notified at daybreak four hours later and opened up an investigation. DRC's minister of communications, Lambert Mende Omalanga, said that "we're trying to determine whether it was suicide or homicide. It looks like suicide but we're not sure".