Burundi arrests general linked to 2015 repression: sources

Burundi security sources on Friday announced the arrest of a top general who civil society groups said played a key role in the deaths and torture of government opponents in a 2015 crisis in the east African nation.

But Major General Bertin Gahungu was detained at his office in Bujumbura for undermining internal security and insulting President Evariste Ndayishimiye rather than on human rights charges, a senior security officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Gahungu is a product of the ruling National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) and a security source said he headed the intelligence service when opposition groups challenged Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for a third presidential term in 2015.

The opposition was violently put down with at least 1,200 people killed and 400,000 people forced to flee between 2015 and 2017. The repression was marked by summary executions, disappearances, torture and sexual violence, according to rights groups.

"His name has been cited as being among the main masterminds of the terror," said Armel Niyongere, head of the ACAT-Burundi rights group.

Niyongere said that Gahungu had been accused of torture and responsibility for disappearances and extrajudicial executions.

Pacifique Nininahazwe, a leading exiled civil society figure, said on X that Gahungu was being detained at the security headquarters where "he mowed down so many of our people" and "tortured Esdras Ndikumana," a journalist who at the time worked for AFP and Radio France Internationale.

The senior security officer said that Gahungu had repeatedly questioned the competency of Ndayishimiye, who became president in 2020 after the death of Nkurunziza.

Under Ndayisimiye, Burundi has switched between signs of seeking to open up and toughening its control of the country including through attacks on human rights, according to non-government groups and UN experts.