Burkina Faso controversy over suspicious death of 12 people in police custody

Text by: RFI Follow

Last week 12 people suspected of terrorism had died during their detention at the Tanwalbougou gendarmerie according to the Faso prosecutor at the Fada tribunal de grande instance. According to members of the collective against impunity and stigmatization of communities, the real circumstances of the death of the 12 people, on the night of May 11 to 12, must be clarified. 

Publicity

With our correspondent in Ouagadougou , Yaya Boudani

For the collective against impunity and the stigmatization of communities, there is no doubt, the 12 people were simply executed under the guise of a fight against terrorism. After research, it was at the morgue in the town of Fada that the deputy Aziz Diallo discovered the lifeless body of his cousin.

“  He was coldly shot in the head. I did not open the other bags to say that they were all shot the same way. But what we saw, even at the cemetery, was that all the wounds were at the level of the head. We cannot, under the cover of the fight against terrorism, take people and kill them without any other form of trial, without explanations,  ”says MP Aziz Diallo.

For Maître Ambroise Farama, the group's lawyer, the absence of an autopsy and identification of the bodies casts doubt on the will of the judicial authorities to shed light on this case.

"  They were kept in police custody at the gendarmerie brigade, which means that they were unable to defend themselves, so there is nothing to explain why they could be found dead the next day. But the prosecutor says they would have died from suffocation. In this case, the prosecutor, if he really wanted to conduct a serious investigation, should already have demanded an autopsy,  ”said Maître Ambroise Farama.

On the government side, no reaction to his accusations yet. It is said to await the conclusions of the investigation opened by the prosecutor from Faso.

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