Authorities arrested Alain Guillaume Bunyoni seven months after his resignation in a high-level political purge, a leading security source says.
Burundi’s former prime minister, Alain Guillaume Bunyoni, has been arrested, the country’s justice ministry has reported.
Bunyoni was prime minister from June 2020 to September 2022, when he was fired after the president accused unnamed people of planning a coup against him.
“Alain Guillaume Bunyoni is currently in the hands of the police,” said a statement signed on Sunday by Attorney General Sylvestre Nyandwi and shared by the Ministry of Justice.
Bunyoni was arrested Friday in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, Nyandwi said.
The statement did not specify where he was being held or what charges he would face.
The country’s human rights commission tweeted that representatives had visited Bunyoni in detention and said he had not suffered any abuse.
Considered the number two in the country’s ruling party, Bunyoni was a close ally of former President Pierre Nkurunziza, who died in office in 2020.
He has been under US sanctions since 2015 for his alleged role in violating human rights amid violence sparked by Nkurunziza’s decision to pursue a third term in office.
Bunyoni served as security minister during the 2015 unrest.
Burundi’s National Independent Commission on Human Rights (CNIDH) said it visited Bunyoni on Saturday, adding that he “has not suffered any kind of torture or other abuse since his arrest”.
Interior Minister Martin Niteretse told a press conference on Wednesday that authorities were looking for Bunyoni.
The former prime minister was “arrested very quickly by national intelligence,” a senior security source told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.
While the international community has noted a relative opening up of the country since President Evariste Ndayishimiye took office in 2020 following Nkurunziza’s sudden death, in September 2021 a United Nations human rights commission called Burundi’s rights situation “disastrous”.
Burundi has been largely isolated by Nkurunziza’s chaotic and bloody rule, and the country of 12 million remains one of the poorest in the world.
In 2015, Nkurunziza oversaw the crackdown on political opponents amid unrest after he bid for a third term in office in violation of a peace deal that ended a bloody civil war in 2006.
About 300,000 people were killed in 13 years of ethnic fighting, while about 400,000 people fled abroad amid reports of arbitrary arrests, torture, killings and enforced disappearances.
The country became an international pariah as a result of these developments, with donors cutting off aid and the US and European Union imposing sanctions on some officials.