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Guede * hasn’t heard from his little cousin for over a year. The last time he saw Poura *, a 31-year-old shepherd, was on the morning of July 10, 2020, at the Ouagadougou bus station. In the midst of the crowd and the exhaust pipes, the young man had nevertheless promised to ” come back soon “, before getting on the bus to Djibo, in northern Burkina Faso. He had just been released from the high security prison (PHS), near the capital, where he had been held for more than three years.
On the day of his release, the family did not expect to see him arrive, on foot, in front of the door of their house. Poura was released without warning. No money either. He had to walk five hours by the side of the road, from his cell to his uncle’s home in the city center. He was wearing a dirty old boubou and looked lost. “We never gave him back his papers or his phone”, assures his cousin.
Poura was arrested in April 2017 while he was grazing his herds in the bush near his village, near Djibo, and placed under arrest warrant for “criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. For lack of evidence, he was released without trial or trial.
Like him, 460 people indicted for acts of terrorism have benefited from a dismissal or provisional release since 2016. They were quite simply released into the wild, without any follow-up, because in Burkina there is no There is no reintegration program for these former prisoners.
“They hit me with a rope”
Guede is increasingly worried. Since his cousin took the northern route, he has been unreachable. Each call is transferred to an automatic answering machine. There, in his village, the jihadists have sabotaged the telephone antennas and are monitoring the comings and goings of the inhabitants. Poura is caught between the threat of reprisals from terrorist groups, if he moves, and the operations of security forces in the area.
All the family knows is that the Shepherd has found his wife and baby boy, his millet fields and his oxen. The rest, his arrest, his years in prison, his new life, “Nobody wants to talk about it”. Not to add to shame and anger, but also out of caution, in case there is “Passed to the other side”. Guede thinks about it often. “Many of those who came out joined the groups afterwards, to seek revenge or seek protection”, assures the latter, who lives in Ouagadougou but is from the same village.
July 9, 2020, The World Africa had been able to meet Poura in the capital, the day before his departure for the Sahel region. Something had broken inside him, his “Confidence in the state” and in ” the future “, he testified out of sight, sitting in his uncle’s dimly lit office, evoking the feeling of a huge mess. Poura did not see her son grow up. He was 1 year old when he was arrested.
Before being transferred to the PHS, the breeder said he had spent fourteen days in the Djibo gendarmerie, crammed with around thirty people in a small cell. “They hit me with a rope so that I could talk and beat the detainees”, he said, haunted by the memory of his jailers. “I’m going to have to learn to live again, but I’m afraid the soldiers will come back to arrest or kill me”, he confided, his face dark.
In Burkina, alleged abuses by security forces and abuses by self-defense militias add to jihadist attacks, fueling the cycle of reprisals. Since 2015, violence of all kinds has killed more than 3,700 people in the country, according to the latest count from the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).
The Fulani community singled out
Djibril * has also been living with a tight stomach since he was arrested in April 2019 by “An army and VDP patrol” – the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland, civilian auxiliaries recruited by the Burkinabe forces to fight against terrorism – while taking his 4-year-old son to the hospital by bicycle, in the east of the country.
This 36-year-old farmer was released after two months spent in the Fada N’Gourma camp, the capital of the region, and four at the PHS. But he remains terrified by the “Military fatigues” and the “Kalashnikovs” militias who control the entrance to his village and killed his older brother and his wife in 2019. “They arrest and kill the Fulani, they say that we are accomplices of the terrorists”, says this father of four. He himself says always trying to understand why he was arrested. He says to himself that it is ” due to [sa] clear skin “ and his Fulani surname, indicated on his identity card.
In Burkina Faso, the feeling of stigmatization is worsening within the Fulani community, regularly singled out since some joined the ranks of the jihadist group Ansaroul Islam, founded by the Fulani preacher Ibrahim Malam Dicko. “Obviously, some people want to revolt, they have the impression that the country is at war with them”, Guede saddens. In his family, he assures that 49 people were arrested and 15 others killed by the security forces.
Summary executions, arbitrary arrests, detention without trial … “Injustice costs the State dearly”, points out Ali Sanou, secretary general of the Burkinabé Movement for Human and Peoples’ Rights (MBDHP). “We can make legal errors, but we have to manage the afterwards, otherwise these people risk becoming time bombs”, alerts the activist, who denounces a “Excessive militarization of the fight against terrorism”.
“We are taking five years of your life”
Judges can decide to place the former detainee under judicial supervision, but there is no electronic bracelet system, social monitoring or redress. “We take five years of your life, we release you, you become marginalized or you risk being executed by terrorists, who suspect you of having become an intelligence agent”, summarizes a lawyer. At the Ministry of Justice, we assure that “Reflections are underway” to organize their reintegration.
Exiled far from his fields and his cattle, Djibril, the former detainee, lives in shame. Reclusive in a small rental in Fada N’Gourma, he tries to feed his family by trying to earn some commissions on the sale of other people’s oxen.
In the village of Poura, in the Sahel, another form of justice is now being exercised. That of jihadist groups. Men must wear a beard and short pants, women the veil. From “Ghadi” (Islamic judges) act as arbitrators and punish residents who do not respect Sharia law. “It goes from lashes to a severed hand for thieves or execution in case of treason”, Guede reports. An intractable judgment, but immediate. “Now the villagers are going to see them to solve a problem, he continues. They trust them more than the military. ” In the Sahel, the thirst for justice has never been so pressing.
* The first names have been changed.
Summary of the series “Burkina: a punishment against terrorism”
The feeling of injustice continues to worsen in Burkina Faso, where jihadist attacks, intercommunal reprisals and abuses blamed on the security forces have left more than 3,700 dead since 2015, according to the latest count from the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).
Faced with the spiral of violence, the families of the victims demand the right to the truth and to compensation. But in the field, the investigations are long and tedious. Between security threats and the lack of resources, the magistrates of the specialized pole are struggling to carry out their mission. In the meantime, around 900 suspected terrorists are crowding into the cells of the country’s high security prison, near Ouagadougou.
While on August 9, for the first time in six years, five jihadists were sentenced in the country, The World Africa investigated the difficulties of anti-terrorism justice and the path of detainees and their families.