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VI. Illegal detention by agents of the SNR

The government has failed to provide effective oversight of SNR detention facilities. In Bujumbura itself, the SNR operates at least two detention facilities, one in the Rohero 1 neighborhood and another next to the office of the General Prosecutor.

By law, public prosecutors are mandated to visit detention facilities in their jurisdictions.¹¹³ The prosecutor of Bujumbura confirmed that he has had access to SNR facilities on occasional inspection visits, but according to others of his staff who sought to visit the sites, magistrates and prosecutors have sometimes been refused admission by SNR staff.¹¹⁴ One noted, “There are many jails and cells inside the SNR compound. They operate completely outside the law. We really don’t know what is going on in there.”¹¹⁵ The International Committee of the Red Cross had access to the main SNR facility on two occasions in May and September 2006.¹¹⁶ ONUB human rights monitors have not had access to the detention facilities of the intelligence service since December 2005, and local and international human rights investigators who report publicly on their findings have not been allowed to visit the facility, leaving detainees deprived of basic safeguards against potential serious human rights violations.¹¹⁷

Under Burundian criminal procedure law, a person may be detained by judicial police for one week, extendable to two weeks in cases of “unavoidable delay” (sauf prorogation indispensable) and then must be charged or released.¹¹⁸ It appears that at least three alleged FNL combatants have been held without charge at the SNR for months. Aloys Nzabampema was taken into custody on November 8, 2005,¹¹⁹ and has not been transferred to another detention facility or released. One witness previously held at the SNR facility told Human Rights Watch researchers that Nzabampema was still there in mid-August 2006.¹²⁰ Two other allegedly high-level FNL leaders have been held since July 4 by SNR agents.¹²¹ These men may have been involved in serious violations of international humanitarian law. If credible grounds for prosecution exist, authorities should charge them and bring them to trial. If not, they should be released. According to the Bujumbura prosecutor, the SNR has said that the three will be sent to a demobilization center for FNL combatants administered by the Ministry of Defense, but as of late September military sources said that they had not arrived there.¹²² 

Human Rights Watch has documented numerous other cases of suspected FNL combatants now in the regular prison system and held beyond the statutory limit for pre-trial detention.¹²³ Unlike those held by the SNR, however, these detainees have been held in sites regularly visited by human rights observers from NGOs and the human rights division of ONUB.  

In April, Deputy Administrator of the SNR Colonel Kiziba told Human Rights Watch that the SNR was working to improve its image and reputation and that SNR facilities would no longer be used as sites for detention but rather only for collecting information.¹²⁴

In defense of his agency, Colonel Kiziba said that before the change in government in August 2005 the Documentation Nationale had had a bad reputation and that the services of the state intelligence agency were abused under the previous regimes. He felt that the current employees of the SNR had inherited a bad reputation that was no longer warranted. At the end of the April 6 meeting, Colonel Kiziba agreed to a date when Human Rights Watch researchers and ONUB human rights officers could visit the detention facilities of the SNR, but on the appointed date no one was allowed access.¹²⁵

Burundi is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires that a state specify the legal basis on which individuals may be deprived of their liberty and the procedures to be used for arrests and detentions (Article 9). Only arrests and detentions conducted in accordance with such rules are considered lawful, thus restricting the discretion of individual arresting officers. The prohibition against arbitrary arrest or detention also means that deprivation of liberty, even if provided for by law, must be necessary and reasonable, predictable, and proportional to the reasons for arrest.

The ICCPR also requires an arresting authority to promptly communicate to detainees any charges against them. A person can at first be lawfully held without charge but he or she must be charged within a reasonable time. In Burundi the permissible period is no more than two weeks.

International human rights law also obliges the state to provide redress for violations of the right to liberty of the person and to security of the person. In the words of the ICCPR, “Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.”¹²⁶