Burundi jailed ex-PM released on medical grounds

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NAIROBI — Burundi's ex-prime minister General Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, serving a life sentence for an attempted coup, was released on medical grounds Wednesday, a judicial source and relatives told AFP.

Once one of the most powerful government figures, Bunyoni was prime minister from mid-2020 until September 2022, when he was fired, days after President Evariste Ndayishimiye had warned of an alleged coup plot against him.

Rights groups have said his diabetes had worsened in prison due to a lack of medical care and he was suffering loss of motor skills and speech.

Bunyoni had already been hospitalised since October but was formally granted "provisional release for medical reasons," the judicial source said on condition of anonymity.

He was taken to his home in the commercial capital Bujumbura.

"His condition is extremely worrying," a relative told AFP, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

A former police chief and internal security minister, he was seen as the head of a cabal of military leaders known as "the generals" who wielded the true political power in Burundi up to his arrest in April 2023.

Burundi, in the Great Lakes region of Africa, faces regular criticism over its human rights record and is one of the poorest countries on the planet.