Burundi ex-VP up for coup plot

2006-08-01 15:35

Bujumbura - Police arrested eight suspects including the country's former vice-president on Tuesday accusing them of orchestrating an attempted coup, said a police official in Burundi.

Brigadier general Adolphe Manirakiza, chief of Burundi intelligence, said Alphonse Kadege, four officials of the transitional government and a former rebel leader were seized at the ex-vice president's home after holding a series of meetings aimed at toppling the current regime.

Two other suspects were also held and police were still searching for the president's spokesperson Pancrace Cimpaye.

The transitional government handed power to an elected government last year.

This central African country was emerging from a dozen years of conflict between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis, who had dominated government, economy and military since Burundi's independence from Belgium in 1962.

The conflict had killed more than 250 000 people, most of them civilians dying from conflict-induced disease and hunger.

Burundi's war started in October 1993, after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a Hutu.

- AP