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Eight soldiers accused of planning “a project to destabilize the institutions of the Republic” were arrested in Burkina Faso, said the military prosecutor of Ouagadougou on Tuesday. This announcement comes in a tense social context linked to the deterioration of the security situation in the country.
A military plot once morest the power thwarted in Burkina Faso ? Eight soldiers, accused of having planned to “destabilize the institutions”, were arrested in Burkina Faso, the Ouagadougou military prosecutor said on Tuesday (January 11th).
The military prosecution affirms in a statement to have been seized, Saturday, of an “allegation of project of destabilization of the institutions of the Republic which projected a group of soldiers”, on denunciation of a “member of the band”.
An investigation was opened and “eight soldiers were arrested” and are being questioned, the statement said. According to security sources interviewed by AFP, Lieutenant-Colonel Emmanuel Zoungrana is one of the officers arrested.
A weakened power
Corps chief of the 12th commando infantry regiment, he was until now commander of the grouping of forces in the western sector, engaged in the fight once morest terrorism in this country regularly bereaved by jihadist attacks.
According to one of the security sources interviewed, “suspicions of a plot to destabilize (power) with ramifications abroad” had weighed on him and several soldiers since the events of November 27.
That day, hundreds of Burkinabè took to the streets to denounce the “inability” of the authorities to stem the jihadist violence. Clashes broke out between demonstrators and the police, leaving a dozen injured.
Spiral of violence
Like its Malian and Nigerian neighbors, Burkina Faso has been caught, since 2015, in a spiral of violence attributed to jihadist armed groups, affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, which have left at least 2,000 dead and 1, 4 million displaced people.
The population’s fed up was exacerbated by the particularly deadly attack in Inata (north) on November 14, where at least 57 people, including 53 gendarmes, were killed by armed jihadists.
Two weeks before this attack, the gendarmes of Inata had alerted the staff to their precarious situation, claiming to lack food and to feed themselves thanks to poaching.
In mid-December, a new government was appointed in Burkina Faso, headed by a former UN official, Lassina Zerbo, who called for “cohesion” in the face of terrorism.
With AFP
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