Burkina Faso must probe death of terror detainees - rights group

A Human Rights group, CISC, is calling on authorities in Burkina Faso to explain the death in detention of alleged terrorism suspects.

The group of 12 persons detained overnight on suspicion of terrorism were found dead in their police cells last week.

At a recent press conference, the rights group denounced the untimely deaths and accused the security forces of “coldly executing” the detainees.

Maître Ambroise Farama, lawyer for CISC said: “Everything leads us to believe that they were kept in the jail and then taken out and coldly executed. And the haste with which they were buried without first doing the autopsies suggests that they were trying to hide the truth.”

Family members who were at the cemetery described scenes they say were worthy of a horror film. One of them is Aziz Diallo, a sitting member of parliament and cousin of a victim: “… they suspected that it was him so they took off the plastic covering and saw that he had been shot in the head……

“We cannot, under the pretext of the fight against terrorism, take people, individuals – 60-year-olds, 70-year-olds, children – and just kill them without any form of trial, without any form of explanation. That is not doing the fight against terrorism any favours.”

According to the prosecutor, a total of 40 people were arrested at the same time as the deceased 12, most of them of Fula ethnicity – a tribe accused of links with terrorist groups. The activists now questions the fate of the remaining detainees.

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