Tag: Burkina Faso coup

The leader of last month’s failed coup in Burkina Faso, Gen. Gilbert Diendere, has been charged with crimes against humanity, a senior military justice official said on Friday.

The elite presidential guard led by Diendere took the country’s president, prime minister and cabinet members hostage, soon before scheduled elections.

Protests erupted against the revolt, and Diendere was forced to hand back power after a week, Reuters reported.

“Gen. Diendere is being prosecuted for crimes against humanity. We have formally charged 23 people,” Col. Sita Sangare, Burkina Faso’s director of military justice, said.

Judicial sources said last week he had been charged for lesser offences alongside former foreign and security minister, Djibril Bassole, accused of supporting the coup.

Bassole, also a former joint United Nations-African Union mediator in Sudan’s Darfur conflict, denies the accusations, his lawyer has said.

Charges against all the defendants ranged from threatening state security and murder to concealing the bodies of the dead and fraud, Reuters quoted Sangare as saying to journalists.

“The possible sentences could include the death penalty if it is established that murder was preceded by cruel treatment or followed by acts of cruelty,” Sangare added, without spelling out whether Diendere or Bassole might face execution.

A court in Burkina Faso on Tuesday charged a general and a former foreign minister with crimes including threatening state security and murder in the wake of a short-lived coup last month, judicial sources said.

Gen. Gilbert Diendere led a putsch by elite presidential guard soldiers that saw them take the country’s president, prime minister and members of the transitional government hostage less than a month before elections, Reuters reported.

Though the week-long power grab failed, some of his forces resisted an order to disarm, forcing the army to attack their base in the capital Ouagadougou last week. Diendere, a former spy chief, was handed over to authorities on Thursday after initially seeking refuge in the Vatican embassy.

Djibril Bassole, once foreign minister, was also arrested in connection with the coup.

The two men, who are close allies of deposed longtime leader Blaise Compaore, were each charged with 11 offences, according to two sources familiar with Tuesday’s proceedings.

Other charges included colluding with foreign forces to destabilise interior security, voluntary assault, and willful destruction of property, the sources said.

At least 11 people were killed and 271 injured as the presidential guard crushed protests against their actions.

Burkina Faso is due to hold presidential and general elections on Sunday.

The leader of a short-lived coup in Burkina Faso, Gen. Gilbert Diendere, was handed over to authorities on Thursday after seeking refuge in the Vatican embassy, sources in the transitional government said on Thursday.

Diendere, a former spy chief, was at the head of a week-long power-grab by Burkina Faso’s powerful presidential guard last month, during which the interim president and prime minister were held hostage, Reuters reported.

He had sought sanctuary in the embassy in the recent days after the transitional government – tasked with guiding Burkina Faso to elections this month – was returned to power amid international pressure and popular protests.

“He has been handed over to Burkinabe authorities,”  a judicial source close to the transitional government told Reuters.

A military source said Jean Baptiste Ouedraogo, the former president of Burkina Faso, escorted the former putschist to the capital Ouagadougou’s main gendarmerie camp in a heavily armed convoy.

Earlier, Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zida had said the government had provided guarantees to the Vatican embassy that Diendere’s life would be respected if he was handed over. Zida said he would be handed to judicial authorities.

Diendere said he led the coup because of proposals to dismantle the elite presidential guard, the RSP, and to exclude allies of deposed president Blaise Compaore from running in this month’s scheduled presidential election.

The putsch lasted a week and the government was restored last Wednesday. During its first post-coup cabinet meeting it formally disbanded the RSP and launched an inquiry into the military power-grab.