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Burundi jails Radjabu over plot
04/04/2008 10:32 - (SA)
Bujumbura - Burundi's Supreme Court sentenced the former head of the presidential party to 13 years in prison for plotting against the state and slapped heavy jail terms on seven co-defendants, judicial sources said on Friday.
"Hussein Radjabu was sentenced to 13 years in prison by the Supreme Court of Burundi yesterday (Thursday)," a court official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"Five other co-defendants were handed down the same sentence, while two others were slapped with 10-year sentences," the official added.
A former minister of planning and a former senior official at the presidency are among those sentenced, judicial sources said.
Aim of destabilising the state
According to Jean-Bosco Ndikumana, who was Burundi's attorney general in April 2007 when six of the eight accused were jailed, Radjabu attempted to "recruit former rebels with the aim of destabilising the state."
The trial started in December 2007.
"We are astonished by this verdict, we are appalled by the Burundian judiciary becaue Hussein Radjabu is innoncent and there has never been the first bit of evidence against him," said an MP loyal to Radjabu.
"It's a political sentence. Hussein Radjabu never agreed to toe the line after being evicted and he's paying the price for it today," a Bujumbura-based diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Radjabu was the secretary general of President Pierre Nkurunziza's ruling CNDD-FDD until until February 2007, when he was sidelined by the president.
Burundi has been ravaged by a civil war that has claimed over 300 000 lives since 1993 and remains chronically paralysed by political crises and ethnic tensions.
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