Former President of Burundi, Pierre Buyoya has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of another former president in 1993.
Buyoya was accused of murdering Melchior Ndadaye, who had defeated Buyoya to become the central African country’s first freely elected president.
Ndadaye was killed, along with several of his cabinet ministers, in an ambush by Tutsi soldiers four months after he won the election, reports said. A few low-ranking officials were arrested for the assassination in 1998.
The murders and the following political turmoil led to a civil war that lasted until 2016. Around 300,000 people died in those ethnic clashes.
After a military coup, Buyoya, a Tutsi, ruled the nation between 1996 and 2003.
In the recent ruling, the nation’s top court also sentenced 18 others in relation to the case, three of whom were given 20 years in prison. According to local reports, many of those convicted, including Buyoya, did not appear in court since they were abroad.
Those sentenced were also ordered to collectively pay a fine of 103 billion Burundian francs (€45 million; $53 million).
Pierre Buyoya is currently positioned as the African Union’s representative in Mali and Sahel.
The African Union is yet to comment on the sentence.
Recall that in November 2018, an international arrest warrant was issued against Buyoya. He said it was “another diversionary move aimed at burying painful, unresolved questions,” referring to a political crisis in the nation following the 2015 elections.
Reacting to the sentence, Buyoya in a statement, said “We reject these judgements, which are in no way binding on us”.
“This is a political trial conducted in a scandalous manner, in violation of all the rules of law. We decide to appeal to the Burundian courts and, when the time comes, to external courts,” he said at a press conference in Bamako.
The former head of state was also speaking on behalf of the twenty or so military and civilian officials sentenced at the same time as him from 20 years to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court of Burundi.
“Given the rule of law in Burundi, I believe that to go there to face the trial would be tantamount to suicide” and “I do not feel like committing suicide at the moment”. “I will fight to be represented, at least when it comes to the trial that is taking place in the country,” he added.
Buyoya explained that he would also “discuss in full transparency with (his) superiors” the possibility of “postponing” his duties as AU special envoy to Mali and the Sahel. “It is not for me to decide myself,” he said.
