A court has convicted 13 people and given them sentences ranging from the death penalty to two years’ imprisonment for their role in the killing of a senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official in Burundi.
In the decision on Tuesday, a five-member Bujumbura appeals court sentenced four former high-ranking security and prisons officials to death for the November 2001 killing of WHO representative Kassi Manlan, who was from Côte d’Ivoire, said Burundi’s chief prosecutor, Gerard Ngendabanka.
The court, which did not make public how the five judges voted in the case, sentenced nine other people convicted for their role in Manlan’s killing to prison terms ranging from life to two years’ imprisonment, Ngendabanka said.
Defence lawyers have not indicated whether they will appeal the verdict. They can appeal to Burundi’s High Court, which has jurisdiction over the regional Bujumbura appeals court.
”I am very surprised by the ruling. I am myself very shocked,” said lawyer Prime Yamuremye, who represented Emile Manisha, a former Bujumbura police chief who was given the death penalty.
In Geneva, WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib on Wednesday declined to comment on the verdict, but said of the slaying: ”For the WHO, it was a big loss. It was a shock for us to see him murdered.”
Manlan, who had represented the WHO in Burundi for just three months, was found dead on November 20 2001 by fishermen on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura.
The Geneva-based WHO had confirmed an internal investigation was conducted after the murder, but said it would not make the report public while the case was still being tried.
During the trial, one of the defence lawyers, Bernard Maingain, alleged that former president Pierre Buyoya and his wife ordered Manlan’s killing, linking the WHO official’s death to the embezzlement of an unspecified sum of money meant for malaria prevention and treatment in Burundi.
Maingain’s clients, two night guards at Manlan’s house, were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment each. — Sapa-AP