A woman mourns after her son was killed during gunfire in the Nyakabiga neighbourhood of Bujumbura on Saturday.

Reuters/Nairobi


More than two dozen generals and senior army officers accused of being behind a failed coup went on trial in Burundi yesterday amid heightened tensions in the capital after attacks last week by insurgents in which about 90 people were killed.
Former defence minister Cyrille Ndayirukiye and five other generals are among the 28 people standing trial for their role in the attempted coup in May, launched when president Pierre Nkurunziza was abroad. The coup was swiftly foiled.
Onésime Kabayabaya, one of the defence lawyers, told Reuters the trial had begun in the central town of Gitega. He said the defendants had complained about mistreatment in jail and said they had not had time to review their case files.
Justice ministry spokeswoman Agnès Bangiricenge said the group was “charged with an attempt to unseat the country’s constitutional institutions”, as well as carrying out assassinations and other acts of violence.
The trial highlights what experts say are worrying signs of division among the security forces in a crisis that erupted in April when Nkurunziza announced his bid for a third term.
Opponents said his re-election, secured in a disputed vote in July, violated a peace deal that ended a civil war in 2005.
That peace deal, which opponents said limited the president to two five-year terms, also included reforms to the army, which absorbed rebel fighters of the majority Hutu ethnic group into a force that had been led by the Tutsi minority.
Burundi’s government insists the army remains united, but experts fear the violence could fracture the patchwork force.
The crisis has stoked tensions in a region where memories of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide are still raw. Burundi accused Rwanda, which has the same ethnic mix, of letting rebels recruit Burundian refugees on its soil, a charge Kigali denied.
The trial follows fighting in the capital Bujumbura last Friday when insurgents attacked military sites. The government said the gunmen had aimed to seize weapons but had failed.
“Both Hutu and Tutsi in the army were united to kick off the attackers,” presidential media adviser Willy Nyamitwe told Reuters, dismissing reports that soldiers in the camps had fought each.
He said the attackers “came from outside the barracks”.
Following a typical pattern during the months of crisis, life in Bujumbura swiftly returned to a semblance of normality after Friday’s flare-up, with people back on the streets and shops reopening.
The violence was just the latest in a spate of shootings, explosions and assassinations.
Several leaders in the May coup bid fled. One of them said the plotters still planned to overthrow the president. Burundi has accused Rwanda of providing safe haven for the rebels.
Burundi’s Nyamitwe said Kigali was allowing Burundian refugees to be recruited “into a rebel group, trained and armed by Rwanda”, making his comments after a charity said in a report that “non-state armed groups” were recruiting.
Rwanda, which hosts more than 73,000 Burundian refugees, denied the allegations.
More than 220,000 Burundians have fled their country, heading to neighbouring states, as the violence persists.
A draft resolution introduced at the UN rights council yesterday called for an investigative team to be deployed to Burundi “as soon as possible” to probe abuses in the crisis-hit country.
The resolution will be debated at an extraordinary meeting of the council on Thursday which was requested by the United States to review deteriorating unrest in Burundi, where mounting violence has sparked fears of a civil war.
The draft calls for United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein to  “deploy urgently and as soon as possible a mission...to undertake a diligent and thorough investigation on violations and abuses of human rights” in Burundi.
The draft further requests that Zeid’s office “be provided with all necessary resources to fulfil this mandate”, which includes permission from Burundi’s government for outside experts to work in the country.  
Burundi on Friday saw some of its worst violence in months of political unrest, with 87 people killed.
Burundi’s crisis has included a failed May coup, sparked by president Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term in office, which he later won in disputed elections in July.
UN figures released before Friday’s violence showed at least 240 people had been killed and more than 200,000 had fled abroad since May, raising fears of a return to civil war, a decade after the end of a 1993-2006 conflict between rebels from the Hutu majority and an army dominated by minority Tutsis.
In Kigali, a report yesterday from a US-based advocacy group said Burundian refugees in Rwanda were being recruited into rebel groups.
Refugees International said that men and boys in Rwanda’s Mahama camp, run by the United Nations and Rwandan authorities, were being recruited into “non-state armed groups” and faced threats if they refused.
It added that the Burundian recruits are trained in Rwanda and efforts are made to send them back to Burundi via neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.