Alain Guillaume Bunyoni is currently in police custody, according to a statement released by the justice ministry on Sunday and signed by General Prosecutor Sylvestre Nyandwi.
Nyandwi reported that Bunyoni was detained on Friday in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.
Where he was being kept or the charges he would be up against were not made clear in the statement.
The nation’s human rights commision tweeted that officials had visited Bunyoni while he was being held and that he had not been mistreated.
Bunyoni, who was regarded as the second-in-command in the nation’s ruling party, was a close friend and ally of the late President Pierre Nkurunziza, who passed away in office in 2020.
As a result of his alleged involvement in human rights violations during the unrest brought on by Nkurunziza’s decision to run for a third term in power, he has been subject to US sanctions since 2015.
During the 2015 turmoil, Bunyoni served as the security minister.
After visiting Bunyoni on Saturday, the National Independent Commision on Human Rights of Burundi (CNIDH) reported that he “has not suffered any act of torture or any other abuse since his arrest.”
In a press conference on Wednesday, Interior Minister Martin Niteretse stated that Bunyoni was being sought by authorities.
Under the condition of anonymity, a senior security official told the AFP news agency that the former prime minister “was arrested very quickly by the national intelligence service.”
Despite the fact that the country has shown signs of relative opening up since President Evariste Ndayishimiye entered power in 2020 after the unexpected death of Nkurunziza, a United Nations rights committee branded Burundi’s rights situation “disastrous” in September 2021.
Burundi, a nation of 12 million people, is still one of the poorest nations in the world due to Nkurunziza’s erratic and brutal administration, which left it mostly isolated.
Nkurunziza led a crackdown on political opponents in 2015 during unrest following the commencement of his third term campaign, which was against the terms of the peace accord that ended a deadly civil war in 2006.
In the 13 years of ethnic conflict, some 300,000 people perished, and about 400,000 more fled to other countries amid allegations of arbitrary detention, torture, murder, and enforced disappearances.
As a result of these events, donors reduced money, and the US and EU imposed sanctions on some officials, turning the country into an international pariah.
