BUJUMBURA, Burundi
Burundi's powerful former prime minister Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni (pictured) appeared in court on Monday accused of undermining national security and insulting the president, a judicial source and witnesses said.
Bunyoni was prime minister
from mid-2020 to September 2022 but was fired in a high-level political purge
after President Evariste Ndayishimiye took office.
A former police chief and
minister of internal security, he was replaced by then interior minister
Gervais Ndirakobuca, days after Ndayishimiye had warned of a "coup"
plot against him.
He was arrested last month in
the city of Bujumbura on the eve of his 51st birthday.
"Everyone was surprised
to see him arrive handcuffed," a witness told AFP on
condition of anonymity, adding that he was clad in the green uniforms worn by
Burundian prisoners.
Monday's session held before a
council chamber extended his pre-trial detention at Ngozi Prison in the north
of the country, a judicial source who asked for anonymity to discuss the case
told AFP.
The former premier was charged
on Friday before a three-judge high court in a closed session, the source
added.
Bunyoni is accused of
"undermining the internal security of the state, undermining the proper
functioning of the national economy and illegal enrichment", according to
court documents seen by AFP.
He is also facing charges of illegal
possession of weapons and insulting the president.
A close ally of former
president Pierre Nkurunziza, Bunyoni was an influential senior figure in the
ruling CNDD-FDD party.
He was seen as the head of a
cabal of military leaders known as "the generals" who wielded the
true political power in Burundi and the president himself had alluded to his
isolation in a 2021 speech.
Ndayishimiye took power in
June 2020 after Nkurunziza died of what the Burundian authorities said was
heart failure amid widespread speculation he succumbed to Covid-19.
He has been hailed by the
international community for slowly ending years of Burundi's isolation under
Nkurunziza's chaotic and bloody rule.
But he has failed to improve a
wretched record on human rights and the country of 12 million people remains
one of the poorest on the planet.
Burundi had been under US and
EU sanctions over a bloody crisis that erupted in 2015 when Nkurunziza made a
controversial bid for a third term in office.
The turmoil claimed the lives
of 1,200 Burundians and saw 400,000 flee the country.
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