OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso
Ablassé Ouédraogo, former Burkina Faso foreign minister and former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), was kidnapped on Sunday by "individuals" claiming to belong to the "national police", his political party announced on Wednesday, calling for his "immediate release".
Ablassé Ouédraogo, aged 70,
"was taken by individuals claiming to be members of the national police
force from his home in Ouagadougou on Sunday 24 December at around
6.30pm", wrote the party he chairs, Le Faso autrement, in a press release.
Three days after his
abduction, the party said it had "no news of its president and no one has
been able to speak to him" or "know exactly where he is", it
added.
It called for his
"immediate and unconditional release".
Le Faso autrement, which
"strongly condemns and denounces the kidnapping" of the former
minister, says it will "hold the perpetrators of this kidnapping
responsible for any attack on the physical or moral integrity of Mr
Ouédraogo".
In early November, the party
denounced the army's decision to "requisition its president, Ablassé
Ouédraogo" to "send him to the front" in the "fight against
terrorism".
According to Faso Autrement,
this requisition is "a sanction" applied in response to the
"stances" taken by the politician.
Ablassé Ouédraogo, Blaise
Compaoré's former Minister of Foreign Affairs (1994-1999), has gone over to the
opposition and set up his own party. He is highly critical of the military
regime installed since a coup d'état at the end of September 2022 and led by
Captain Ibrahim Traoré.
In an open letter published at
the beginning of October, he denounced "the restrictions on individual and
collective freedoms, the muzzling of the press" and "the retreat of
democracy" that he had observed since the coup.
The NGO Human Rights Watch
said in November that at least a dozen dissidents had been
"requisitioned" in Burkina Faso to "participate" in the
fight against the jihadists. In addition, several cases of kidnapping have been
reported in recent months by local sources in Ouagadougou, including that of
Daouda Diallo, a human rights defender kidnapped by men in civilian clothes at
the beginning of December.
Since 2015, Burkina Faso has
been caught up in a spiral of violence perpetrated by jihadist groups linked to
the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. More than 17,000 civilians and soldiers have
been killed, according to the latest estimates by the international NGO Armed
Conflict Location Action (Acled), which records the victims of conflicts around
the world.
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