Niger’s ousted President Mohamed Bazoum is being held in a secret location by the junta that seized power in the West African state, lawyers representing him said on Friday, denying accusations that the president had tried to escape.
Bazoum has been in detention since a July 26 coup, and there have been international calls for him to be released.
The junta said late on Thursday that Bazoum and his family, with the help of accomplices in the security forces, had planned to drive a vehicle to the outskirts of the capital Niamey and catch a helicopter ride to neighbouring Nigeria.
His lawyers rejected it as nothing but a concoction, however.
“We energetically reject these made-up accusations against President Bazoum,” Mohamed Seydou Diagne, one of Bazoum’s lawyers, said in the statement, adding that the junta had “crossed another red line with the secret detention.”
The lawyers said in the statement that Bazoum and his family had no access to lawyers or the outside world.
They were previously kept in the presidential residence in the capital Niamey where electricity had been cut since Aug. 2, and only one doctor could visit them every second day to take them supplies, they said.
The doctor was denied access on Friday, they added.
The lawyers demanded that the junta show proof that the president and wife and son were alive.
Withdrawal of French troops nearly half-complete
Another French military convoy is scheduled to leave Niger for Chad in the coming days, marking the half-way point of the promised withdrawal of the 1,450 French troops based in the West African nation, Niger colonel Mamane Sani Kaiou said on Friday.
Last week, French military convoys began leaving bases in southwest Niger – the start of a departure demanded by Niger’s junta that has dealt a further blow to France’s influence in West Africa’s conflict-hit Sahel region.
“As of today, 282 people have left. In the next few days, close to 400 or more will be leaving, bringing the troops here in Niger down to half of the 1,450,” the colonel told reporters at a joint press conference with the commander of France’s Sahel forces.
French General Eric Ozanne said a convoy that left last week had arrived in Chad’s capital N’Djamena and that the journey had gone smoothly.
“It was perfectly planned and prepared by the Niger authorities,” Ozanne said, adding that he expected the same consideration for future convoys.
Niger’s coup was one of five that have swept West Africa’s central Sahel region in three years, leaving a vast band of arid terrain south of the Sahara Desert under the control of military rulers.
Like elected presidents in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, Bazoum was pushed out in part because of mounting insecurity caused by an Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands in the region and which the military said it would be able to contain better than a civilian government.
Bazoum’s party and family members say he has had no access to running water, electricity, or fresh goods, prompting condemnation from the country’s former western allies.
Following weeks of pressure from the military officers who seized power in July, France last month agreed to withdraw its troops based in Niger by the end of the year, marking a definitive breakdown in military ties with its former colony amid a wave of anti-French sentiment in the region.
Ozanne said the troops withdrawing by road via Chad would not remain there. “This is not the repositioning of our operations from Niger to Chad,” the general said, adding that the goal remained to have completed the withdrawal from Niger by Dec. 31.
