Burundi opens trial of 'mutinous' peacekeepers
BUJUMBURA — Burundi on Thursday began trying 33 soldiers accused of mutiny while serving as peacekeepers with the African Union force in Somalia.
Military prosecutor Lietenant-Colonel Jean-Claude Nzigamasabo said that on January 9, 2009 the junior officers gathered and took arms without permission and disobeyed their superiors.
The officers did so "to demand 6,000 dollars, claiming that their superiors had embezzled the money promised by the AU," Nzigamasabo told the court.
"All the 33 soldiers are being tried for revolting and incitement to revolt. They took arms and positioned themselves in all the strategic areas at Mogadishu university," the prosecutor said.
Only 23 of the accused were present during the hearing, five having deserted and five others were absent.
"The army defrauded us of 100 dollars on our monthly salary, 10 dollars on our daily food rations and 2,000 dollars on our deployment fee, which makes a total of 6,000 dollars per soldier," one of the accused officers told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The incident had been kept under wraps and the soldiers were arrested when they returned home weeks after the stand-off.
Burundi and Uganda are the only countries to have deployed troops to Somalia for the AU peacekeeping mission.
The oft-delayed salaries of the AU's Burundi force is a sensitive issue among the troops serving in the pan-African body's mission in Somalia.
