Gabon’s main opposition leader, Alain Claude Bilie By Nze, has been in jail for more than three months after the \u200bgovernment resurrected an 18-year-old private financial dispute as a pretext \u200cto sideline him, his lawyers said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Nze was serving as prime minister when Brice Oligui Nguema, Gabon’s current president, took power in a coup in \u200b2023, and he unsuccessfully challenged Nguema in an election last \u200byear.<\/p>\n
Nze’s party, “Together for Gabon”, reported on Nze’s imprisonment on its \u2060Facebook page.<\/p>\n
Nze’s lawyers said in a statement that he has spent \u200b100 days in “political and arbitrary” solitary confinement after being arrested on \u200bApril 15. The basis for his arrest was a private dispute over about 7,600 euros ($8,650) dating to 2008, they said. His party said he was accused of fraud \u200band breach of trust in that dispute.<\/p>\n
Nze has been confined to \u200ba five-square-metre cell without light at a prison in the capital, Libreville, his \u200clawyers \u2060said.<\/p>\n
His lawyers said that they have not been allowed to inspect case files and that the investigating judge has said he no longer has those documents. A Libreville appeals court rejected a defence request to annul \u200bproceedings on June \u200b2.<\/p>\n
Gabon’s Justice Ministry did \u2060not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
“A man is being held on the basis of a case \u200bfile his defence has never been permitted to see,” \u200bNze\u2019s counsel, \u2060Arthur Vercken, said in the statement.<\/p>\n
The August 2023 coup in Gabon ended the more than five-decade rule of\u00a0Ali Bongo and his family. Nguema \u2060was\u00a0elected president\u00a0in \u200ba vote intended to return the oil-producing \u200bCentral African country to civilian rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gabon’s main opposition leader, Alain Claude Bilie By Nze, has been in jail for more than three months after the \u200bgovernment resurrected an 18-year-old private financial dispute as a pretext \u200cto sideline him, his lawyers said in a statement. Nze was serving as prime minister when Brice Oligui Nguema, Gabon’s current president, took power in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":11,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2362,33],"tags":[3940,1472,181],"class_list":["post-21606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-alain-claude-bilie-by-nze","tag-brice-oligui-nguema","tag-gabon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21608,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21606\/revisions\/21608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}