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BURUNDI: RELEASE OF JAILED POLITICAL LEADERS CAUSES MIXED REACTION January 12, 2006
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) Burundian leaders are divided over the definition of what constitutes a political prisoner following the provisional release of 673 prisoners who had been incarcerated in connection with the violence that followed the 1993 assassination President Melchior Ndadaye.
The prisoners were released on Tuesday and reacting to this move, Justice Minister Clotilde Niragira said it was based on report of a commission mandated to compile a list of prisoners convicted of political crimes.
The leader of a human rights association said the commission must define clearly who qualified as a political detainee.
Evariste Nsabiyumva, The spokesman of the ruling Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces de defense pour la democratie (CNDD-FDD), told Net Press, that his party considered only "detained master minders of the 1993 coup d'etat as political prisoners".
The leader of the Puissance d'Auto Défense-PA Amasekanya, a Tutsi militia, said the prisoners' release was a return to the days of "impunity and the genocide of the Tutsis".
Pancrace Cimpaye The spokesman of the mainly Hutu Front pour la Démocratie auBurundi (FRODEBU), said those who avenged Ndadaye, that is, the "authors of the ethnic massacres should be included in the group of prisoners to be released".