Burundi has arrested an eighth person in a suspected plot to overthrow the Central African nation’s government in a bloody coup, an intelligence source said on Thursday.
The authorities say they have evidence that former high-ranking politicians and a dissident rebel leader — all arrested this week — planned to kill President Pierre Nkurunziza in June with military support.
”Poppon Mudugu has been arrested. He is also wanted for being implicated in this attempt to destabilise government institutions,” the source said, referring to an ethnic Tutsi activist arrested on Thursday.
Earlier this week, security services arrested seven people including former vice-president Alphonse Marie Kadege, Deo Niyonzima, the leader of a small ethnic Tutsi party, an army colonel and an ex-leader of a rebel faction.
A prisoner rights organisation known as APRODH on Thursday condemned the detainees’ treatment as ”inhuman”, and a lawyer for Kadege and Niyonzima said they had been tortured.
”I have written to the heads of the intelligence services so that my clients can be allowed to be treated. I have information that my clients are being tortured,” lawyer Isidor Rufyikiri told local radio Bonesha.
”I myself have received threats saying I will suffer the same fate if I do not abandon this matter.”
Government officials were not immediately available for comment.
Burundi is tasting peace for the first time in more than a decade after a civil war killed more than 300 000 people.
The country’s new-found peace is generally seen as an African success story, but rights watchdogs have warned its security services still commit abuses.
President Nkurunziza, an ethnic Hutu, first said five months ago that three unnamed men were plotting a coup against him. — Reuters