According to family members, the humorist and Buja FM radio host Alfred Aubin Mugenzi was apprehended on Tuesday, March 29, at a hotel in Muramvya by Burundi’s National Intelligence Service (SNR) and charged with insulting the president.
“He was transferred to Bujumbura and is being held in the SNR dungeons, but no one has been allowed to see him,” said a relative, who did not want to be named. Mugenzi’s family fears that the comedian may suffer the same fate as others taken by the SNR. Rights groups claim that the detained are usually tortured there or simply disappear.
Meanwhile, SNR officers told the relative that the comedian was arrested “for contempt of the head of state” after a skit he performed in Rwanda last year. Mugenzi mocked football-mad third-term Nkurunziza, showing him refusing to leave the pitch despite receiving two yellow cards.
The president’s refusal to stand down after two terms and instead run for a third mandate in 2015 triggered bloody unrest, a failed military coup and months of violence that has killed hundreds of people.
When contacted, an intelligence official confirmed the arrest saying that the comic insulted the president. However, he added that Mugenzi would be soon released.
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