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Burundi starts trial of May coup plotters, days after fighting

Burundi's former Defense Minister Cyrille Ndayirukiye (C) points to a direction during a attempted coup in the capital Bujumbura, May 13, 2015. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Jean Pierre Aime Harerimana
Burundi's former Defense Minister Cyrille Ndayirukiye (C) points to a direction during a attempted coup in the capital Bujumbura, May 13, 2015. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Jean Pierre Aime Harerimana
14/12/2015

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A group of generals and senior officers went on trial in Burundi on Monday accused of being behind a failed coup in May, with the capital still tense after attacks last week by insurgents on military camps in which about 90 people were killed.

Former Defence Minister Cyrille Ndayirukiye and five other generals are among 28 people standing trial for their role in the attempted coup, launched when President Pierre Nkurunziza was abroad. The coup was swiftly foiled.

The trial highlights what experts say are worrying signs of divisions among the security forces during a crisis that erupted in April after Nkurunziza was re-elected for a third term. Opponents said his re-election violated terms of a peace deal that ended a 12-year civil war in 2005.

That peace deal had included reforms to the army, which absorbed rebel fighters of the majority of Hutu ethnic group into a force that had been led by the Tutsi minority.

While Burundi's government insists the army remains united, experts fear the violence could fracture the patchwork force and deepen a crisis in a region where memories of neighbouring Rwanda's 1994 genocide are still raw. Rwanda has the same ethnic mix.

Onésime Kabayabaya, one of the lawyers defending those on trial, said the trial had begun in the central town of Gitega.

He told Reuters that lawyers defending the group had not spoken to their clients before it started. As it opened, he said their clients complained about mistreatment in detention and also said they had not had time to review their case files.

Justice Ministry spokeswoman Agnès Bangiricenge earlier told Reuters the group was "charged with an attempt to unseat the country's constitutional institutions", as well as carrying out assassinations and other acts of violence.

Among those standing trial on Monday was retired Colonel Daradangwa Bosco, a key figure in the former Tutsi-led army.

The trial followed fighting in the capital, Bujumbura, on Friday when insurgents attacked military sites. The government said the gunmen had aimed to seize weapons but had failed.

"Both Hutu and Tutsi in the army were united to kick off the attackers," presidential media adviser Willy Nyamitwe told Reuters, dismissing reports soldiers inside the camps fought each. He said the attackers "came from outside the barracks".

Following a typical pattern through the months of crisis, life in Bujumbura swiftly returned to a semblance of normality after Friday's flare-up, with cars and people back on the streets. Shops and offices also reopened.

Friday's violence was the latest in a spate of sporadic shootings, explosions and political assassinations of officials and anti-government opponents. Victims have often been found dead in the streets, with their hands tied behind their backs.

Several leaders in the May coup bid fled. One of them, General Leonard Ngendakumana, said the plotters still planned to overthrow the president.

Coup leader and former Nkurunziza ally, General Godefroid Niyombare, has not been heard of in public since the plot failed. Some exiled opponents say he is still alive, but there has been no independent confirmation of this or of his whereabouts.

The government has dismissed the threat, saying it will round up and prosecute those seeking to destabilise the nation.

 

(Additional reporting by Ed Cropley in Johannesburg; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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