Burundi’s ex-President Pierre Buyoya said on Wednesday he
had resigned his position as an African
Union envoy after his conviction and life sentence last month for the 1993
killing of another president who defeated him in an election.
Along
with 18 others, Buyoya was convicted in absentia by the Supreme Court for the
killing of Melchior Ndadaye, the
country’s first democratically elected president, that triggered a 10-year
civil war which claimed at least 300 000 lives.
In
a tweet, Buyoya, whose whereabouts are not known, said he had resigned his
position as the AU’s envoy for Mali and the Sahel region.
“Following
the verdict given by the Supreme Court of my country, I have decided, by my own
will, to resign as the AU high representative for Mali and the Sahel” he said.
“I
want to be free of all constraints to devote my time for my defence despite
numerous obstructions.”
He
tweeted after the ruling in October that he would appeal against his conviction
in national and international courts, posting a statement that the case was “purely
political”.
Buyoya
had been an AU envoy for eight years. In 2018 Burundi’s top government
prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant for Buyoya and his
co-accused.
Ndadaye,
a Hutu, was shot dead along with several officials in an ambush by ethnic Tutsi
soldiers four months after he won election, touching off the protracted civil
war that was fought mostly along the Hutu-Tutsi ethnic divide.
Ndadaye’s
successor, Cyprien Ntaryamira, and then Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana
died in 1994 when a plane carrying them was shot down by a rocket over Kigali
in neighbouring Rwanda, triggering the Rwandan genocide in which 800 000 were
killed.
In
addition to his life sentence, Buyoya and those convicted alongside him were
ordered to collectively pay a fine amounting to 100 billion Burundi Francs ($54
million).
Buyoya
ruled Burundi twice, between 1987-1993 and then 1996-2003, having seized power
in a military coup on both occasions.
(TODAY.NG)
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